I am the Original Poster— I like Coal and Wood Burning fireplaces and would be glad to go to the full expense of a fully functional coal or wood fireplace (two coal and one wood burning). But I’d like to run gas most of the time as a regular heat source, as those who use regular gas heaters do.
There is a type of coal fireplace that was standardized in London in the 1880s and were built even here in the Americas until maybe the 1930s. Components are still produced today in England.
In the Americas from the 1920s onward, many of these were retrofitted with mundane gas heaters, which were relatively maintenance free and ran all the time. In recent years, fake but authentic looking coal and coal grates have been produced that burn gas. They look like a real coal fire—and if you’ve never seen one you have no idea how magical they look. In some ways like something in the northern U.K. or Ireland from the mid 1800s but in some ways like something right out of the Arabian Knights.
Someone else told me that if I was going to do this, burn real coal in it because there is nothing quite like a real coal fire. I’d like to supplement my heating with gas fireplaces but wonder if burning real coal occasionally would be doable,
As far as gas logs, virtually everyone knows the pleasure of a real wood fire. The hiss and the noise of moisture heating in the logs, the pop and crackle—the smell of a wood fire—and eventually the cherry red of a hot, dying fire—a gas log fire only temporarily gives the illusion but can be run all the time. Some times it would be nice to burn the real thing.
Its worth the expense to have the real thing(s) but would like the convenience of burning gas in ordinary time.