Having no fireplace damper means a significant amount of your home's heated or cooled air is escaping straight up the chimney, while cold outdoor air drafts in. Your best immediate and long-term solutions involve installing a top-sealing damper, adding glass fireplace doors, or using temporary draft blockers.
THE FIRE PLACE
It is not recommended to use a chimney without a damper, as this can lead to heat loss, reduced efficiency, and the risk of smoke and other combustion gasses entering the living space. If your chimney does not have a damper, it is important to have one installed.
If you've purchased an older home or a home where the owner built a DIY fireplace without building permits or inspections, then it's possible you don't have a damper. Whether your fireplace is gas or wood-burning, if it was built with a pre-fabricated insert, then it almost certainly has a damper.
Buildings are divided into fire-resisting compartments using walls, floors and ceilings designed to resist fire for a set period, typically 30, 60 or 120 minutes. Fire dampers exist to ensure that ventilation systems do not undermine this compartmentation.
Yes, an operational damper is absolutely necessary for wood-burning and traditional masonry fireplaces. It safely vents toxic smoke and gases while the fire is active and seals the chimney when the fireplace is not in use to prevent conditioned air from escaping your home.
How to Do It: Wait until all embers have extinguished and the fireplace is no longer warm to the touch. Closing the damper too soon can trap smoke and carbon monoxide inside your home, creating a dangerous situation. Safety Tip: Always double-check that the fire is completely out before closing the damper.
No, not all fireplaces have a damper. While most traditional wood-burning and standard gas fireplaces do, many modern EPA-certified units, direct-vent gas fireplaces, and some historic masonry fireplaces do not have or use one.
Here's an example to help illustrate this, with a fireplace with a Btu rating of 30,000: (30,000 x 1.59) / 100,000 = 0.47. That means it will cost about $0.47 per hour to run your fireplace. If you run your fireplace for 8 hours a night, it will cost $3.76 a day.
A fully open damper allows maximum airflow, making the fire burn hotter and faster. If you want a slower burn or a fire that lasts longer, you can partially close the damper to reduce the oxygen supply. Just be careful not to close it too much because it can lead to poor combustion and smoke buildup.
Installing a damper for stainless steel chimney pipe is an easy task any homeowner can do. By installing the damper into single wall stove pipe, you can have air control to your fire.
A competent person is someone with the training, knowledge, experience and equipment to install, test, inspect and maintain fire dampers safely and accurately. For us, competence means: Understanding current British Standards such as BS 9999 and BS 9991. Being trained in both mechanical and HVAC safety.
Yes, a fireplace generally adds value to a home, though the actual ROI varies. Real estate agents report that a fireplace can increase a home's resale value by $1,000 to $5,000, or roughly 6% to 12% of the property's total value.
Fortunately, there is a second style of damper that you can install yourself, called a "Top Damper". Unlike the traditional throat damper, a chimney top damper is installed at the top of the chimney. To operate the top damper, a cable is installed down the flue to the firebox.
Short answer: people are ditching fireplaces. From dodging draughts and dust to embracing cleaner, cheaper heating, old hearths are out and modern solutions like Electric Fire Suites are in. Keep reading to explore the lifestyle, health, and eco reasons behind this cosy-but-smart home trend.
To find this information, you can take a look at your most up-to-date gas bill. The cost used to be around 0.3p per kWh but from October 2022, it could be as high as 0.10p*. Using the latter figure, a five kW gas fire would cost around 50 pence to run per hour (five kW multiplied by 10 pence).
Whether you can safely run a gas fireplace all day depends entirely on its type:
Natural gas is usually the cheapest way. Even with higher gas prices, a heating system fueled by natural gas is typically less than electricity, propane, or heating oil. Energy efficiency is another way to assess the cost of a heating system. An energy-efficient heating system saves you money on your heating bill.
Technically, gas fireplaces are usually cheaper to run than a furnace, but that doesn't mean they're better. This is because a furnace is better at turning gas into heat than a fireplace is. For the comfort of everyone in your home, it's best to use central heating.
Replacing a fireplace damper costs between $150 and $700 on average, including both parts and professional labor. The total price largely depends on whether you are replacing a standard throat damper or upgrading to a top-sealing model.
Explained, the chimney pipe must be a minimum of three feet above the roof but also two feet taller than anything within ten feet. The portion of the rule stating the pipe needs to be 2 feet above anything within 10 feet is where most people get confused.
Yes, you need a damper, but how you use it depends entirely on the type of gas fireplace you have:
Factory built/prebabricated fireplaces – All manufacturers require that the glass doors be fully open when operating the fireplace with gas logs. Not partially open, FULLY OPEN. Partially opened doors as well as closed doors tend to cause spillage of the gases into the house.
14 Common Gas Fireplace Problems & What to Do
How long does it take to cook? As described, once you have your ingredients, it shouldn't take longer than 30 minutes. Cooking over an open fire is even quicker. Always check the crust for a golden-brown colour and the inside for doneness before you leave your damper to cool down.