Fireplace - I'd buy one if I owned my home  

agh!
I knew when I saw your title what the fireplace would be, and I love those!
I don't know if they are still being made (I kinda doubt it) but if they were, they'd cost a lost more than the opening bid for that one. Even with shipping.
Probably would be a lot more energy-efficient today, though. But still.

terrible brent
Groovy looking but shockingly inefficient. For a start, more than half the heat would go up the chimney. And secondly, it takes up a huge whack of space in a room for the nine months it's not being used. I do like its space age aesthetic however. I'm a sucker for a sexy rocket ship!

... but, Stephen, all...
... but, Stephen, all fireplaces have a chimney!!
In fact it would heat more than one that is in the wall.

Exactly!
which is precisely why they are banning these types of fireplaces in Australia. They are incredibly inefficient because of heat loss. As a functionalist, rather than a modernist, I find such archaic ways of doing things quite retrograde.
BTW, Did you know, Sydney was more polluted 100 years ago than now, because everybody burned wood for heat? And check out the old photos of London - the sky is black.
Also, the wood which is burned has to come from somewhere - usually rural properties where it is either cleared (not good) or picked up off the forest floor (also not good, as it provides habitat for critters).
But it sure does look nice Brent. I gotta give you that much.
I'm sure Olive would be with me on this point.

Interesting. Is their...
Interesting. Is their manufacturing banned? Or is it their use? Or both? E.i. If you have a fireplace in your home, do you have to remove it?

Dang!
I saw one of these a few years back before I owned a home for $10 bucks. I kick myself at the things I've passed up...oh well.

I'm really
I'm really rather puzzled by :
"which is precisely why they are banning these types of fireplaces in Australia. They are incredibly inefficient because of heat loss"
Were a fireplace NOT to lose heat, how would it be viable as a heat source?

I think Heath
meant heat loss "up the chimney and out of the dwelling". Perhaps you are just being wry, Robert1960 because I love that type of humor. Like a telephone Psychic, if you really needed their services, shouldn't they know to call you if they were truly psychic, instead of you ringing them up.

Heath
Heath wouldn't make such an unqualified comment

In double height spaces (like...
In double height spaces (like below) surely the fact that the metal chimney loses heat is a good thing?, it would act like a huge long radiator heating the whole height of the space

Precisely
Precisely one of my points
The fireplace featured is a gas fire, as anyone making a judgement about it should have read...
What particular method of heating is Stephen condoning, and what type of fire exactly is 'Australia' banning?
Orange fireplaces?
Gas fires?
Wood burning stoves?
Danish fireplaces?
Are they banning the manufacture of them, the use of them, the ownership of them, the resale of them..what???
A fireplace made in one of the coldest and most design aware countries in the world is hardly likely to be inefficient..is it ?
Wood (for I assume that is what he though fuelled this particular fire) though it emits carbon when burned, is a renewable and sustainable source of fuel if properly managed, unlike the fossil fuels i.e coal, that were responsible for London's pollution up until the 50s
With the world's supply of fossil duels i.e coal and gas depleting, show me the better alternative please?
I'm fully aware of wind and water generated power, but neither make for a nice focal point on a room ..
A home nuclear power plant perhaps ?

And
I would kill for this one 😉

Let's get our terminology right , Boys and Girls
All of these units are "Wood Stoves" NOT fireplaces. Big Difference! Many fireplaces especially in old homes that didn't use a flue are horribly inefficient with heat being sucked out of a space whether or not a fire was actually burning in the fireplace. Heat rises, me dears, basic physics.
Wood stoves on the other hand have exposed chimney pipes (usually) and the unit themselves stand free of a wall and are surrounded by the air of the space. This allows them to deliver their heat into the space much more efficiently than a fireplace does. I've shown off my Morso 1125 on the site before, and let me tell you that sucker kicks some serious thermal arse! It's about the size of a US mailbox...actually smaller in the height measurement, but it can heat a 1270 sq ft room to the point where we're down to skivvies if we're not careful. We only burn a few logs a night as the thing is so good at its job. And there are lots of examples of both fireplaces and woodstoves at are outrageously efficent at heat extraction. Most scandanavian countries use a high mass, circuitous flue fireplace that basically only lets out a sigh of smoke at the top that has no heat left in it at all. The clever Finns have been making soapstone (which has a high heat absorbtion index) fireplaces and woodstoves for years that also waste very little heat. And they're lovely...see below
As for the inherent dirty-ness of wood. Bull hockey! Sorry Stephen, you are spouting rubbish on that point. What made London and Sydney so dirty was the burning of COAL not wood. Coal is nasty, evil stuff and a significant factor in global warming. The amount of CO2 that it pumps into the atmosphere on a daily basis is astounding. And in the US it still accounts for nearly 1/2 of our electricity production. We know this yet we keep using it. Humans are stupid and stubborn that way. Wood produces no more CO2 in its burning than it would if it rotted in the woods. Also basic physics there, conservation of energy and Newtonian laws of matter versus energy.

.
I think BTM got me confused with Stephen! No, I chose not to comment becuase I don't know that much about heating, but thanks to Olive and her excellent info I now know a bit more 🙂
Its the idea of a fireplace people like, pure nostalgia in most places if its burning or not...they try to replace the hearth with huge sofas or 1 foot thick coffee tables but its not the same.
But what is more efficient at the end of the day? Central heating or a wood stove? If its central heating, small windows or underfloor heating then I think we just have to accept that and come up with a hearth replacemnt that is not so romantic. Atriums perhaps? they are a bit more 'alive' then burning wood.
I suppose it all comes down to local versus centralised production of energy, how much energy is lost transmitting electricity through hundreds of miles of cable?
Tell us more Olive, if you have time.