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House Fireplace
Stone Fireplace smokes inside the house?
Hello,
I just bought a house. It’s and old house and it has a cool stone fireplace with a stone chimney. When I start the fire some of the smoke comes into the room. What’s the reason? How can I fix that?
First of all your chimney may need cleaning of soot, birds nest and bee hives (in the old days they used to drop a goose down; its flapping wings would dislodge everything…). Next, when you light a fire, make it HOT – that is use lots of kindling and light woods (just remember pine sap pops and can cause sparks to fly). An old trick is to carefully stretch a broad sheet of newspaper across the top portion of your fireplace to minimise the smoke outlet – this causes the smoke to draw upwards until the chimney has heated up. Then add your medium wood, followed by the logs.
Alternatively, your chimney may not be tall enough. It should project higher than the roof-line otherwise eddies in the wind can cause down-drafts. You can pick up rectangular concrete blocks (with a hole in the middle) to stack onto the chimney is this is the case.
