View Fireplace Insert Vs Wood Stove Efficiency. What you might be better off doing is putting in a wood stove insert into that fireplace. Not much can beat the look, feel, and smell of a wood fire, but many homeowners can get hung up on deciding whether a wood burning fireplace or wood stove is a better, more efficient choice.
Of the two, the wood burning fireplace is more challenging to install because it requires a chimney as opposed to 1 flue:
In terms of fuel cost, unless you have a free source of wood, you'll have to new technology has revolutionized the environmental efficiency of wood burning fireplaces, stoves and inserts. A fireplace insert is a stove of gas or wood that is fixed into a fireplace and is much smaller than fireplaces. Warmth is important to most of us, but there are other factors to be considered. Wood stoves and fireplace inserts are the two most commonly adding a blower system to your wood stove insert can improve the overall efficiency.