I'll have to look into the steel idea. We have the typical cityslicker brick fireplace in our 1980 built house in the Moore area. It doesn't put out much for heat.
Most likely you have something similar to what I had, more warm air from the house going up the pipe than heat being produced out in the room.
I put a piece of 1/2 steel plate against the back wall of my almost unusable fireplace. Welded a couple 2x2 inch tabs out from the bottom to serve as feet to keep it from tilting forward. It made an amazing difference. I installed a slanted grate from Grate-Wall-of-Fire shortly after. The combination of the two caused us to have to re-arrange furniture because some of it we had used to "sit by the fire" was getting way too hot to the touch.
I have posted this in other threads, and most likely sound like a broken record, but in this day and age I am usually not overly impressed by items that just do what they are supposed to do. After 10 years of not being able to build a fire when the outside temp was below 50' because it would cool the rest of the house down so much the furnace could hardly keep up in the background, now we use the same fireplace to actually heat a large portion of our house. I am still very impressed after 3 years of using it.
I would like to provide a fresh air inlet for combustion rather than just using the normal leaks throughout the house for combustion air but I have not figured out how to terminate a pipe at the bottom of the firebox. The bottom has a built in circulation blower assembly that blows air up around the inner metal box and exits at the top under the mantel. I most likely will not get that fresh air inlet done.
Getting warm in here, need to slow down feeding the wood. 23' outside. Good luck to you.
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