Some useful information about doing repairs on or around the home (for the do it yourself type person)

Fireplace

1. Regular wood
2. Artificial logs (like Duraflame)
3. Gas "Vented" logs
4. Gas "Vent Free" logs

Here are the basic differences.

• With vented logs, most of the heat goes out the chimney, but it uses gas and the flame looks real. This produces lower heat.
• With un-vented logs, most of the heat stays in the house, but it uses gas and the flame looks blue and not as real. This produces lower heat.
• With artificial logs, you can have the damper open or closed (We have a CO detector in same room as the fireplace which is around 15x20 and the detector read 0 whether the damper was open or closed). The fire looks pretty real with little bad (CO) emissions. This produces lower heat.
  The log lights easy. I was able to light the log (we used 2 logs) with one match on 2 occasions.
• With normal firewood, most of the heat goes out the chimney, but it produces a lot of it, and the flame looks real.

Since our heater was was cracked and around 30 years old, and I have a wife and 4 small children, I could not have CO gas blowing around. I was looking and trying to find the best logs to use in our home. I used the artificial logs, I bought these at Wal Mart for around $16 and they worked well for me.
Since the previous Saturday I rebricked the back of my fireplace, I was a bit uncertain if the heat from the fire would damage the mortar. I could not tell if there was any damage. I didn't look either. At a glance there didn't look like there was any damage.
I calked the fireplace around 6pm with a 3M CF fireplace calk and I used the fireplace with a fire around 9pm.

Terrazo tile

Air Conditioning

Furnace

Painting