Gas Fire Vents

soundslive

Hi all, recently moved house that has a gas fire in it, looking for some advice regarding 2 vents i have either side of my gas fire in my living room. Fire is inset (approx 10 years old) and vents up a chimney. The two vents are approx 6inches square and have plastic tunnel behind them that sort of sits on top of the cavity and feeds the air brick vents outside. Obviously in the winter it gets very cold in the living room as wind blows straight through these things into the room, not to mention the amount of road noise that comes through them, during daylight hours you can see straight through the grills to outside, ie i may as well have 2 holes to the outside in my living room wall! So 2 questions really: 1)As i never use the gas fire, can i block these up to conserve some warmth? 2) If i had the gas fire removed and replaced with an electric one can theses holes be bricked and plastered back up or are they serving some other purpose? thanks in advance

richardw

You may get condensation if you block them up.

Canucklehead

Good evening: The vents are designed to provide ventilation for the gas fire. If you have the gas fire removed you can block up the vents but don't block up the vents with the gas fire in place...someone else could come along, use the fire and :eek:.

HTH

Canucklehead

soundslive

Canucklehead wrote: »

Good evening: The vents are designed to provide ventilation for the gas fire. If you have the gas fire removed you can block up the vents but don't block up the vents with the gas fire in place...someone else could come along, use the fire and :eek:.

HTH

Canucklehead

thanks canucklehead, i don't ever intend to use the gas fire, hopefully replace for electric if budgets allow, if i move then i would certainly unblock the holes, thanks

shelly

Our house is about 4 years old and has an open fire that the previous owner used all the time. It too had vents on either side of the fireplace. When we moved in we got a wasps nest in one of the vents so after dealing with that hubby blocked them up from the outside and we had them plastered over on the inside.
Had no problems at all since doing so.