Picture the scene. The outside temperatures have dropped quite significantly, ice is forming into every nook and cranny of your garden.
Maybe there’s a touch of snow in the air. Naturally, you want to light your fire.
So, you go to collect your fuel, gather some kindling and strike a match.
And within seconds the smoke which should be going up the chimney is instead filling your living room.
But why has this happened?
There could be a number of reasons for this. Firstly, the chimney may be BLOCKED with nesting materials or debris. In that case you should get in a chimney sweep to check your chimney.
But more often than not, especially if your chimney has been swept recently, the chimney is probably blocked with something entirely different – cold air.
And a cold chimney simply won’t ‘draw’ smoke away from the fire.
The problem usually stems from the traditional way of lighting a fire.
The problem with this is it’s smothering a very small, cool fire with fuel which needs a heck of a lot more heat to catch fire. So instead of catching fire, it just smoulders and causes smoke. And because smoke is cool, it isn’t hot enough to ‘break’ the cold plug in the chimney. Hence why it simply starts falling back down into the fireplace subsequently into your living room.
The problem can affect all flues, but the following are particularly susceptible:
- Factory made twin wall insulated chimney systems
- Shot chimneys
- Chimneys on the gable end of a property
- Clay lined chimneys
- Chimneys in rural/exposed locations
- Chimneys which haven’t been in use for quite a while
- Any chimney on a bitterly cold day
Thankfully, there’s a better way to start a fire which not only gets the fire hotter quicker, but it also ‘breaks’ the cold plug, produces much less smoke and actually stops you wasting your fuel (and therefore money).
Top-down method of lighting a fire
The top-down method aids in the flue getting up to temperature more quickly and removes the need to open the appliance door to add fuel to the kindling which means there is less of a chance of the combustion chamber cooling.
In a top-down fire, the larger logs are placed on the bottom, with progressively smaller logs, kindling and then newspaper added on top. The newspaper is lit, and the well ignited kindling has burnt through, the flue shall be warm and the logs which the kindling have sat upon should now be charred and ignite cleanly.
ProSweep Professional Chimney Sweep is approved by Devon Trading Standards Buy With Confidence offering a professional and personal chimney sweep & stove flue service in Newton Abbot, Torquay, Paignton, Dawlish, Teignmouth, Bovey Tracey, Chagford and surrounding towns and villages. Book ProSweep on 01626 832051 .
