The ambience of a wood-burning fireplace is both beautiful and magical, and  can  be the very focal point of your home.  Homeowners often ask why is it that there fireplace works sometimes, and other times it is hard to start and may even smoke.  There can be several reasons why a fireplace fail to work right.  As a Seattle masonry contractor for over 35 years we have built hundreds of fireplaces in every part of Seattle.  More to the point we also specialize in the repair and restoration wood-burning masonry fireplaces that have problems.  The overall reason that a fireplace chimney works well all of the time, is that it has been built by a qualified mason that knows how and why a chimney works.  Smoke is very much like water in that it will always take the path of least resistance.  The best way to think about this is smoke is like the wind, in that it always travels towards any low pressure, or negative pressure.

 Almost all of the smoking problems that are associated with fireplaces are the result of negative pressure occurring inside the home while there are positive or high pressure outside.  So every time that you burn your fireplace these pressure can be a little different.  If your chimney or fireplace is built right the heat of the fire can over come these pressures, and the heat of the fire will force air to rise up and out the chimney.  But as that hot fire dies out the pressure can now change back toward your you and your room.  This problem can be overcome by installing an outside air intake in the back or sidewall of your firebox, this is called make up air in that it feeds the fire and firebox the positive air that it needs to create a positive air flow up and out the chimney flue.  Make up or outside air is built in to all new wood-burring masonry fireplaces, but can be installed in older fireplaces as well.  As a home owner there are several things that you can do to test your fireplace and see if it needs make up air.  First without lighting a fire  you can check it by opening the damper as wide as it goes, then take an incense stick and light it while holding it right in front of the firebox.  The smoke that comes off the incense stick will go up and out your chimney flue if there is proper positive air flow, but if the smoke from the incense floats back into the room then you have negative air pressure problem, and need some make up air for your fireplace to work well. chimney-repair-seattle      

One of the best things that you can do to help with negative pressure is to install glass doors on your fireplace.   Not only it help over come negative air pressure, but it will up the efficiencyof your wood-burning fireplace by 20%.  This means that not only are you creating a better flow of positive air, you are also producting 20% more heat for the same amount of wood One more reason that every fireplace should have a glass door installed is that they will let you have a beautiful fire to sit by and enjoy with the glass doors open or shut.  Then if you are feeling a little tired and want to go to bed, you can just shut the glass doors and go to bed.  You won’t have to worry about a spark that might fly out and start a fire.  Also since that the glass doors have sealed of the room for the night, the heat from burning the fireplace is going to stay in the house instead of going up the chimney.  This is also true in regard to any furnace heat that will come on during the night, if you don’t have glass doors on your fireplace you will have to put out the fire by hand then wait till it stops smoldering then close the hot damper, or just let the furnace go up your chimney all night.  As you can see you can not only stop your fireplace from smoking and smelling bad, but also improve how it burns, improve efficiency, Save on your heating bill, and enjoy burning your fireplace more.  These are only two things that you can do to enjoy your wood-burning fireplace more.  We will be offering your several other idea on how to up the efficiency of your fireplace. as much as 50% or more.  There are some great new product on the market that we will cover in future blogs.  www.timwmasonry.com