As of late September 2026, the fireplace in my Riverside living room is swept and waiting, and I already know what I’ll do on the first cold night: load it up, get a good blaze going and leave the furnace off for the evening. For years I told myself that was cheap heat. Wood from the yard, a live flame, no gas meter spinning. Plenty of us here in California think of the fireplace the same way.
Our regional air district has its own view of that fire. South Coast AQMD’s Check Before You Burn program asks residents, from November through the end of February, to check before burning wood in their fireplaces, to limit fine particle pollution. A No-Burn day is a 24-hour ban on wood-burning in residential fireplaces, stoves and outdoor fire pits in the South Coast Air Basin. That’s about smoke, not heat. The heat part is worse news.
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What the Department of Energy says
The U.S. Department of Energy’s fireplace tips don’t soften it: “your fireplace is one of the most inefficient heat sources you can possibly use. It literally sends your energy dollars right up the chimney along with volumes of warm air.”…