Stone Fireplaces

How we Build Stone Fireplaces

If you are looking to build a stone fireplace, you need to realize that this is not your typical masonry project. Though planning permission requirements for stone fireplaces may vary from state to state, we can find out what are the planning permission requirements in your community.

Before hiring someone to build a stone fireplace for you, you need to understand that any kind of fireplace requires special masonry to build. What the most important part of the fireplace is the interior and what the inside of the fireplace is made of.

Fire Resistant Masonry

Fire resistant masonry is masonry that is different from conventional masonry. This type of masonry that is used in a fireplace is masonry that can handle extreme high heat. With a stone fireplace, you have the same inside as with any other fireplaces. First is the fire brick. Fire brick is a brick that is made from a special clay that is yellow in color and can handle very high heat. These fire bricks are also used in kilns and other furnaces.

The special cement that is used when building the insides of a stone fireplace, is a mixture of cement and sand plus clay. This special mixture is designed to be heat resistant. You need to understand that regular cement, mortar, and concrete will crack when exposed to high heat, such as a fire, and can become brittle at the least. The clay in the mortar and the special bricks are designed to handle the high heat and not crack. It is very important that the person who builds your stone fireplace follows these structural requirements to prevent your fireplace from cracking.

Care and Maintenance of Stone Fireplaces

Once your stone fireplace is built, you have to do some special things before you can have a normal full blown fire in it. You want to wait at least two to four weeks before building a fire inside your new stone fireplace to allow the fire cement to cure. You need to understand that a good portion of the ingredients that are in fire mortar are clay. This clay needs to be dry so it can cure slowly. If you expose it to heat right away, the water inside will turn into steam and then could burst and thus the masonry will be ruined.

Once the fire resistant masonry is dry, you want to start a cold fire. This means that you want to have a fire that will not heat up very fast. The reason why you want to slowly heat up the fireplace is because even when the cement is dry, it’s a lot like firing clay in an oven. The only difference is that in a kiln, clay is fired hot without any exposure to cold air, thus it is evenly heated. In a fireplace, you will have cold air coming in the area where the fire is. The idea is to slowly heat up the inside of the fireplace and allow for all the moisture that might still be in the fireplace to escape. After a series of three or four cold slow burning fires, you can start a hotter fast burning fire. You are in effect firing the clay inside the fire resistant mortar and making it stronger by gradually exposing it to high heat. Fires need to be done every day for two weeks before you can use the stone fireplace for its regular purpose.

We also build stone fireplaces and use all the above explained materials for the inside. We can build it for you and then after that, if you follow our recommendations, you will have a fireplace that you can enjoy for years to come.