Proper Chimney Use

At iBuyWoodstoves.com we’ve got a variety of outdoor firepots and chimneys that can add a useful and elegant touch to any backyard or patio. Notice how we said outdoor? That’s the only place that these devices should be used!

Most Chimneys are manufactured in two pieces, the neck (or chimney) and the hearth. These two pieces are often fused together, but you shouldn’t move your chimney around by the neck because the bottom could fall off.

Unless the chemise has built in legs, it probably comes with a stand (or you can purchase one). Regardless, you’re going to want to find a nice level area on the patio or in the backyard for the chemise to rest. More importantly, you want to make sure that there is nothing above the chimney. Some things, like trees or awnings, can catch on fire while almost any covering is going to present ventilation problems as the smoke won’t clear the area (thus, a porch with a roof does not count as outside!).

Though the chimney is designed for fires, it is not designed to have the fire burn on the base. This will possibly weaken the clay and reduce the lifespan of the chimney. Sand, stone, or some other non-flammable resource should be used as the foundation for the fire. A few inches of base should be plenty.

Chimneys typically need to be “broken in” by burning a few small fires. You’ll want to make a few small fires and let them go out (without water) before making bigger fires in the chimney. Do not use any sort of fire accelerant (such as gasoline, light fluid, etc) to start a fire because the liquid can be absorbed by a clay chimney. Once you’re burning big fires, don’t burn them so big that fire shoots out of the top of the chimney. Though this probably won’t harm your chimney, it’s not entirely safe and not recommended.

One Hundred and Five Additional Reasons Your Fireplace May Not Work

In our previous article, Five Reasons Your Fireplace May Not Work Properly, we outlined five mistakes that will make a fireplace work improperly (if at all). Here we’ve got another 105 reasons why the fireplace may still not be working correctly.

Mistake One: Is your house energy efficient? Particularly in older homes, but in many homes, heat is lost through windows, attics, and just overall poor insulation. What most people don’t know is that this poor insulation doesn’t just mean you’ll lose heat, it means that your fireplace won’t function properly. Think about it: if your house is already losing a lot of heat, it’s already operating much in the same manner as a chimney. Thus, a burning fire has could easily vent out into the home instead of up the chimney, depending on how severe the energy loss is and the design of the chimney.

Mistake Two: Is your house too energy efficient? Alas, it seems like the design of homes must be met to the specifications of Goldilocks. A fire needs oxygen to burn, and a house that is too well designed (where there are no drafts and everything is sealed) won’t give enough fresh air to the fire. Though it sounds ridiculous, you might want to consider opening a window (at least briefly) if you notice your Gas Fireplace start to smoke.

Mistake Three: Where is your furnace? Furnaces operate in a similar fashion to fireplaces, in that they warm cool air. Furnaces pull in the cold air from the house and blow out warm air. Chimneys also allow the cold air from the house to escape, leaving just the warmth of the fire. If the furnace is too close to the fireplace, much like in mistake one, the fireplace can have trouble competing with the airflow from the furnace.

Mistake Four: Is your chimney in the right place? If the chimney is located on the outside of the house, meaning that it has at least one wall on the outside of the house, you may notice that sometimes your fireplace doesn’t work as well on extremely cold days. This is because the air inside the chimney will also be cold, and thus, not want to leave the house. Chimneys with more than one exposed wall will have even colder air inside of them, but this is a correctable problem. By starting with a small fire, you can essentially push this cold air out of the chimney so that air can flow freely once you have your large fire going.

Mistakes Five through One Hundred and Five: If you’ve paid attention to our first five mistakes from our other article, you probably noticed that the majority of the problems have to do with the design of the fireplace. Unfortunately, the design of the fireplace and how it will function in your home depends on a large number of variables, from the size and shape of the chimney to the size and shape of the home. If your chimney has been cleaned and still never seems to work right, you might want to consider either rebuilding it and the fireplace, or simply replacing the wood burning fireplace with a gas fireplace insert.

Gas Fireplace Inserts

We discussed how fireplace inserts are installed in existing wood fireplace hearths and thus convert the fireplace to either gas or electric powered (though wood fireplace inserts also exist). The gas fireplace can run off of either propane or natural gas, and you’ll want to take the price of the two resources in your area into consideration when you decide what type of gas to use. Many, if not all, gas fireplace inserts need a gas log set, which are usually ceramic or some other material, in order to add a realistic look to the Fireplace.

Typically with a Gas Fireplace insert you seal off the fireplace completely (as there will never be any debris to remove, there’s no point in opening up the hazardous possibilities presented by an open flame). However, the gas inserts are still going to have fans to blow the warm air into the room. Another nice perk of the gas and electric fireplace inserts is that you can usually control the temperature of the fireplace, which is helpful considering that gas fireplace inserts can burn anywhere from 10,000 to 40,000 BTUs.

There are two types of gas fireplace inserts: direct vent and B vent. The direct vent system is a little more popular because it is more energy efficient. It uses two pipes, one pipe to bring in air and one pipe to serve as an exhaust. The B vent system only uses one pipe, an exhaust pipe, as the air it uses for the fire is from inside the house.

Regardless of which vent system you use, you’ll have to make some modifications to your chimney. The most efficient and safest way of doing this is by running the aluminum or stainless steel pipe(s) through the existing chimney and out through the roof.

IBuyWoodStoves.com has all the materials you need to install a gas fireplace insert in your home. Give one of our customer service representatives a call if you need any help with the process or picking out the best option for your home!