Draft Issues
If you are experiencing draft issues with your fireplace, there can be several reasons. The most common reason is from a lazy draft. This is caused by either the chimney being too short, the flue size being too big in comparison to the opening of the fireplace, or there is too much cold pressure in the chimney.
In most cases, it is one of the first two reasons if the issue is consistently happening. A short chimney can only be solved in one of two ways. The first is to raise it. We can do this by taking the crown off of the chimney and adding rows of brick and flue tile until the chimney reaches the proper height.
The second way to solve a short chimney or lazy draft is to add a draft-inducing fan to the top of the chimney. This is a fan that would replace a chimney cap, and when you are burning, you would turn the fan on to literally suck the exhaust out of the chimney.
If the chimney meets proper height, a draft issue can also be resolved by using a top-mounted damper. In some cases, the damper itself can obstruct the draft, and cause the smoke to roll back into the room.
In these cases, we can remove the damper all together, and sometimes even remove the smoke shelf, depending on the severity of the draft problem. When using the top-mounted damper, it is opened and closed at the opening of the fireplace by a cable that runs up the chimney.
In this case, the flue stays at room temperature, rather than being at the temperature of the atmosphere outside. This allows the exhaust to flow upward rather than fighting the downward cold pressure that occurs when the entire flue is cold.
Call us today to discuss your draft issues and to set up an inspection so that we can discuss the best solution to fix your draft issues.