Tag: Electric fireplaces

How To Keep Your BBQ Clean In Between Summer Lunches

Summer lunches are a great way to bond with your friends and family. However, what is lunch without a BBQ serving smoking hot food on everybody’s plates? Grilled food and a group of friends and family having fun on a warm sunny day is a remarkable sight. Though, to be able to achieve this regularly, you should know how to keep the BBQ clean and in shape at all times. As the BBQ’s service would be required repeatedly, knowing all the techniques for its preservation and cleanliness are necessary. Here are a few solid tips to help you out in this regard.

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Give the BBQ a Nice Brushing

The BBQ is bound to get dirty every time you would grill something on it to keep your summer parties going. The important thing is to ensure that you clean all the leftover food bits, dust and dirt once you are done with the cooking. You should remove the plates and/or grills at first and then brushing off each dust spot and leftovers of food you can find on the BBQ. Check the BBQ manufacturer’s recommendation for the material of the brush but in general, you should avoid any metal piece or any wire for this purpose. You should stay wary of the fact that you do not need to apply a lot of force while brushing off the BBQ as it can end up damaging the equipment as well.

Put the BBQ in Soapy Water

The brush should do the job for the BBQ but the grill or the plate that you had removed would also need cleaning. The best way to clean the grill is to use soapy water. The temperature of the water should be high. This would allow for easy removal of the accumulated dirt, dust and charred food bits from the grill or plate’s surface. Simply use a clean cloth to rub over the surface once you are sure that the soapy hot water has worked over its magic.

Season the BBQ

Seasoning the grill is very important if you want to be able to reuse the BBQ again soon for another summer lunch party. Seasoning the BBQ is not a big deal and only requires some cooking oil and a bit of patience.

  1. To start off, once you are done with cleaning every piece of the equipment, you should use cooking oil and apply it all over the cooking area of the grill.
  2. Use a clean piece of cloth for the purpose. Afterwards, put the grill back in the BBQ and heat it for twenty-odd minutes.
  3. This would season the BBQ again.
  4. Once done, you should wipe off the cooking surface of the grill with a clean piece of a damp cloth.

From charcoal to gas and from built-in to electric, you will find all types of BBQ from the best brands in the market at Home Fires. If you would like more information about the wide range of BBQ’s on offer, contact Home Fires for more information or alternatively, visit the Home Fires site for details.

Gas or Electric Fireplace?

Fireplaces have been in vogue for millennia. Even in the old days, every castle used to have large fireplaces around which people gathered for the sake of getting warm. Nowadays, fireplaces are added to homes for two particular reasons. The first one is to warm the place and the other is to enhance the home’s value. Fireplaces are seen not just as a way of heating the home but also as an interior décor item. This is part of the reason why the wood-burning fireplaces are slowly growing out of fashion. They can be difficult to deal with and aren’t available in many styles and designs. Gas or electric fireplaces have taken over as they are more versatile, flexible and cost-effective than wood-burning fireplaces. So, which of the two should you get? Gas or electric? Let’s find out.

Home Fireplace

Heat Production

You want your fireplace to be producing enough heat to warm the entire room. A gas fireplace does that effortlessly even at low settings. It can generate a lot of heat within a small time duration. You can easily warm a large room with your gas fireplace within minutes. While electric fireplaces can produce ample heat as well, their capacity for heat production falls well short to that of gas fireplaces. An electric fireplace might be a good option to use for heating a small room but it won’t be sufficient for warming up large spaces. With a gas fireplace, you won’t have to install multiple fireplaces in your home. A single gas fireplace would be enough to provide the heat you need.

Visual Appeal

Electric fireplaces are energy-efficient and don’t produce any harmful emissions. However, they don’t produce real flames. Since the electric fireplaces don’t combust a fuel but rather rely on generating heat using electricity, they look fake. You won’t get the same visual appeal with an electric fireplace that you can get with a gas fireplace. In gas fireplaces, natural gas is used as the fuel for combustion. This produces real flames and you can see them dancing inside the fireplace from far away. These flames can catch the eye of the people when they enter the home and garner their attention. Thus, if you are looking for visual appeal then a gas fireplace is the clear winner.

Fuel Availability

As mentioned above, gas fireplaces run on natural gas while electric fireplaces are operated using electricity. You will need a gas connection to get the gas fireplace working and supply of electric power for using the electric fireplace. While both fuels are readily available, natural gas is a more reliable fuel source than electricity. If there is a storm in your area and the power got cut, you will lose your ability to operate your electric fireplace. However, since gas supply doesn’t get cut during a power outage, you can still use your gas fireplace to warm your home. Moreover, you can even use propane gas tanks to power up a gas fireplace but you can’t operate an electric fireplace without electricity.

Home Fires is an established name in the residential and commercial heating industry in Australia. Feel free to contact us if you can’t decide between an electric and a gas fireplace.