A colleague of mine tells me his 6 year old house has a fireplace that drafts downward into the house stinking up the place when its not fired up. He also tells me the damper at the throat was removed and replaced with one that is at the top of the stack.
Anyone ever heard of such a thing? How can he fix it?
Art
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Replies
Might be a dead rodent ?? go up on the roof and check
Probably there's a vacuum in the house for some reason. There should bwe some air admittance arrangment elsewhere, usually associated with the furnace.
Could be downdraft caused by wind from adjacent roof plans, into a too short flue.
Code says top of flue to be 24" min higher than ANY ROOF AREA within 10' in any direction, so as to avoid downdraft.
Odd that this is happening when the fire isn't going. (I think some other posters missed that detail.) Is the damper stuck open at the top? Either that or theree is a big leak in the flu somewhere, and if that is the case, he'd better check it out before lighting any fires!
Is the downdrafting also happening in the flue for the furnace?
At the very least get a CO monitor.
splat
We've had downdrafts, and there are a number of reasons. unfortunately for your friend we have a wood stove, and the only solution I have found is to unhook the pipe and cap the chimney during the months we don't use it.
Some of the reasons:
Like already mentioned with newer houses being built tighter, if you have the bath fans, kitchen fan, and the dryer all running at once, you can be creating a vacuum in the house. Even though we have the makeup air vent attached to the furnace it doesn't seem to do the job.
Is the fireplace on a lower level? He could be getting "Stack Effect". As the warm air in the house rises, (and escapes through leakage), it creates a natural draw in the lower levels.
Our chimney is block and clay liner. When it is very hot and humid we seemed to have more problems. My thought on that is the air in the chimney is cooler and begins to naturally down draft. Again, a kind of stack effect.
Bowz
PS we have a high efficiency furnace, (draws outside air for combustion), and a power vent water heater. (one more thing to create a vacuum)
look to see if your chimney is too short for where it exits the structure...
if so... add a stack and wind cap to the flue...
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most likely, you have other appliances drawiong air from the house and ejecting it thru their vaarious vents. That air has to come from someplace. A cold flue can encourage that air to travel down in the chimney untill he reverses it with the heat of a fire
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Could be Santa Claus stuck from the previous Christmas...... Might be why he didn't drop by my house.
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We have a similar problem in our house, but with wood stoves, not a fireplace. But it is weather dependent. Mostly during the non-heating seasons so it's not a question of furnace draw. It doesn't aid energy efficiency, but what I did was stick a large (250 w) light bulb inside the wood stoves. May not be able to do that with a fireplace, though.