How do I minimize smoke from my fireplace?

Question

We recently bought a house with a brick fireplace. I use newspaper, kindling, and firewood to build my fires. Unfortunately, our living room tends to get visibly smoky particulary at light up and sometimes when manipulating the fire to keep it lit. The fireplace has an ash door in the bottom and a pull chain flue above (obviously opened prior to lighting). There is NO damper (part of the mechanism exists but the damper was removed sometime before we bought the house). Additiontally, there is no other significant spot for air exchange in the house where I could imagine a vacuum being created to draw the smoke inward.

Answer 1

Assuming that the flue is really open and that there are no other blockages...

When you light the fire, you want to create an up-draft that will "suck" the smoke upward. You do this by "warming" the chimney.

Light a piece of newspaper and hold it up into the chimney and let the smoke rise upward. Let the bricks warm a little.

Do this for about a minute or so, careful not to burn yourself.

Then, when you light the fire, the smoke will be drawn up.

However... I'll bet that your chimney needs cleaning and may have a small blockage. Even a partial blockage of a bird's nest can cause the problem you describe.

Answer 2

The problem you are running into is the chimney is so cold that when you light the fire, it isn't hot enough yet to have the hot air rise (and take the smoke with it) so it mixes with the cold air falling and fills your house. If you want to get creative, you can use anything that generates heat (without fire) to warm it up prior to lighting the fire... a hair dryer pointing up, a heater running and pointing up... sometimes the hot air in the house leaking up the chimney is enough over a few minutes or so, to begin the flow upward. Try the hair dryer in conjunction with lighting the fire (a small fire of course) and see if it works. This whole idea totally depends on how large the chimney hole is in diameter... bigger hole = more heat to creat the draft upwards. Good Luck!

Answer 3

The vacum always exists when a fire is started. The air is supplied thru window cracks, door openings, under doors, exhaust events, behind electrical switches,yada,yada.
If the house was 100% sealed up.... The fire would kill you because it would eat up all the oxygen over you(so you would suffocate). Which is always wise to have a window slightly open somewhere to supply additional air. The only other thing is to give the fire its own air supply via a pipe thru to the outside.
When the fire does not get the air to burn, there is no draught up the chimney so the smoke goes sideways as the cold air from outside is "pushing" down the chimney stack and pushing down on the smoke.

Answer 4

One important thing would be to clean that ash drawer regularly. Also make sure your chimney is clean. Wet wood seems to make more smoke. I always feel like a fireplace wastes heat, it all goes up the chimney, but it is pretty. You might want to consider getting an insert that has a way to show the fire when you want to, but that can be tamped down for longer periods of heat.

Answer 5

Cleaning the chimney always helps. I clean mine ever few weeks, but I use wood for 90 percent of my heating. I also use a creosote remover, whihc you should be able to find at a hardware store. It comes in a small bucket and looks like sand. It works wonders.

Answer 6

the damper was the problem b-4. you moved in, you may need to have your chimney cleaned its not drawing the was it should.

Answer 7

get your chimney cleaned and inspected before you start using it!! the seller sure didn't care if it was clean anymore.