Chimney Odors and/or Smoke During the Fire.

  My chimney smokes up the room when I try to light the fire.

   When you open your damper you may feel a cold breeze coming down the chimney. If you have a wood stove you might feel this when you open the door. In either case the starting of a fire will result in lots of smoke entering the room unless you can quickly warm the flue.

  You must defeat the downward flow of cold air (down draft) and you may need to maintain an up draft until your fire is burning on its own. In lesser downdraft situations you can accomplish this by simply holding some blazing newspaper up high, near the top of and inside of the fireplace, were the damper usually resides and this will start the smoke rising.

  Have some paper crumpled loosely on the floor of your fireplace or on your log grate and light it as soon as the smoke starts rising well.  A fire starter or kindling and eventually logs can then be added so long as the fireplace is not smoking into the room.

If holding blazing  newspaper up high inside the fireplace doesn’t do the trick – read on.  You have a more intense down draft situation. Some folks report that opening a door or window while lighting the fire helps. This balances the pressure inside and outside of the house and may reduce the down draft.

  I often find it neccessary to use a more radical approach. If the fireplace has a narrow throat ( the are inside the chimney which is just above the fireplace opening where you will generally find the damper (throat damper.) I place 5 or 6 single sheets of newspaper, very loosely crumpled, up inside the throat. I will then place several similarly crumpled sheets on the log grate. If you try this be careful of falling, burning paper!

  First I light a torch like, rolled sheet of paper and use it to quickly ignite the paper in the throat. Then I wait a few seconds for it to really catch. The flames should rush up the chimney with velocity (as it burns it may shrink and fall down so watch out!  Quickly light the paper on the grate and keep adding paper until  you can add wood and keep the fire going.

With Wood Stoves you may need to place a bunch of paper in thestove, light it, shut the door for a few seconds and then open  the door in 2 or 3 seconds to give it enoug oxygen to burn, but close the door again to force the smoke and heat up the chimney.  Fire starters are helpful to maintain the fire and heat flow up the flue.. This takes a lot of paper and can be tricky until you get the hang of it.

  In  some instances if you do not maintain a fire for an hour or more, you will get smoke backing down the chimney. Longer fires warm the chimney walls and keep the draft going up until the fire is fully extinguised. Solution: Longer fires.

If your fireplace smokes after the fire has been burning several minutes you have a different problem or you may have a downdraft in the begining, but now you are experiencing inadequate draft. You may have one or the other or both.

Inadequate draft: Sometimes a bird nest or a clogged screen at the top of the chimney can csuse this. Oil furnace chimneys also frequently get clogged with soot and deteriorating terracotta chimney liner. Older chimneys with gas furnaces often clog with debris as well, usually because they were once serving oil furnances.

  In the case of a furnace or boiler, you clean the fue and if neccessary you reline the chimney. Of course we pull out nesting and clean out the chimney as well.

  But most fireplaces that have poor draft have construcyion or design issues. Either the fkue is too small or the fireplace is too large.  Or perhaps the flue liner takes a sharp turn slowing the draft. Maybe there is a narrow area that was created by an inexperienced mason.

  Sometimes a deteriorated flue liner with cracks will reduce the draft. This will sometimes cause a furnace to draft poorly, while a fireplace, though dangrous, will usually draft well if a cracksed flue liner is the only problem with the chimney.

  I strongly suggest having your chimney professionally evaluated in a poor draft situatioin. If your fireplace is 10 or 20 years old something as inexpensive as a smoke gaurd may be all you need.  Older chimneys  may also have a smoke gaurd, installed to correctpoor draft, but it is not uncommon to find flaws such as cement joint erosion and cracked flue liners neccessitating more extensive repairs to make an older fireplace safe.

Dave Myers     CEO  301chimney.com