| Author | Message | ||
     Court |
Look . . I see Badweb, with it's diverse expertise, as the best source of accurate BS free info. QUESTION: Builder is redoing a house in Sag Harbor and tells me that the new fireplace does not need a damper. Seems odd. I see some alternatives like balloons you put in and inflate and so forth but is a damper still considered good practice in a chimney? | ||
| Patches |
Maybe check Building and Fire Codes. Closest Firehouse may Help. Also Insurance Company coverage. "Wikipedia" In a chimney flue, a damper closes off the flue to keep the weather (and birds and other animals) out and warm or cool air in. This is usually done in the summer, but also sometimes in the winter between uses. In some cases, the damper may also be partly closed to help control the rate of combustion. The damper may be accessible only by reaching up into the fireplace by hand or with a woodpoker, or sometimes by a lever or knob that sticks down or out. On a wood-burning stove or similar device, it is usually a handle on the vent duct as in an air conditioning system. Forgetting to open a damper before beginning a fire can cause serious smoke damage to the interior of a home, if not a house fire. | ||
| Sifo |
We have a cap on the top of our chimney that will keep the critters out, but I would think you would certainly want a damper to shut off the air flow when not in use. The whole purpose of a chimney is to get a draft going. They tend to do that even without a fire because of the temperature differential between the inside and outside air. I would certainly want an explanation of how they get around this. My guess, and it's only a guess is that you are looking at a fire box that draws outside air for the fire, and the doors on the front seal much better than the fire places of old and actually serve some of the function that the old dampers did. | ||
| Bob_thompson |
Patches: "In some cases, the damper may also be partly closed to help control the rate of combustion." And: "Forgetting to open a damper before beginning a fire can cause serious smoke damage to the interior of a home, if not a house fire." From my chimney fire fighting experience on our fire department in the early days out here those two statements are very true. And I would like to add; if all you want is a fire in the fire place, Ben Franklin stove, etc. for atmosphere or romantic reasons a damper would not be needed. However if you want to use it for heating a room then a damper is needed to keep some of the heat from escaping up the flue. It is a fine line on the opening to retain some heat and yet let all the smoke go up and out. A screen on the outlet of the chimney on the roof will prevent any critters from entering. Lastly, if burning much wood, especially pine, with all the pine tar in it, a yearly cleaning of the creosote residue in the chimney is a must to prevent internal fires in the chimney after the fire has gone out. I responded to these mainly when the cold weather season first begins and were not cleaned. Bob P.S. Good stuff from Sifo also. (Message edited by Bob_thompson on April 05, 2015) | ||
| Mr_grumpy |
The house I renovated some years ago in France we had geothermal underfloor heating installed so we had to find a way of preventing all the heat disappearing up the huge old fireplace and chimney. I fabbed a butterfly system out of steel plate and angle. The pivot was offset so it would hang open unless secured shut this was done using a length of light chain, a spring and a copper washer to work as a kind of fusible link just in case. I got filthy standing full height in the chimney working over my head installing the bugger but it worked a treat. | ||
| Aesquire |
I suppose you don't need a damper, or glass in the windows. I recommend both. | ||
| Strokizator |
Controlling the fresh air intake is more effective than some sort of restriction in the flue, but for that you need doors with a good seal. Otherwise, a masonry fireplace with an open hearth is mostly an aesthetic device. In that case, a chimney cap with scissors-type springs is a good choice for the 99% of the time when you aren't using it. | ||
| Ratbuell |
My living room has an ex-"live" fireplace that's been converted to LP. It has a damper. It was still freakin' C-O-L-D in the living room, even with the damper closed (haven't fired up the LP in the 3 years I've lived here...no wife, no girlfriend, no need for the "romantic appeal"). I installed - in ADDITION to the damper - a set of glass fireplace doors that have a very nice weather seal. Now, the living room is the same temp as the rest of the house (go figure). As noted above - chimneys should have dampers, windows should have glass. REGARDLESS of "code". | ||
| Johnnylunchbox |
A damper is somewhat useful in my opinion, and it is preferable to nothing at all, but it does not provide a very effective barrier to heat loss. It's like having a sheet metal window, it'll stop air from coming in or out, but it wont insulate worth crap. The best thing to do is to run a fresh air duct from the outside to the fire box, that way, the fireplace won't try to draw air from the house, which in other words is the same as pulling cold air in from any unsealed gaps on the perimeter of the house. Unless the builder has a better idea to prevent heated air ($$$) from rushing up the chimney, I'd at least have a damper. Best option is to install a wood stove insert in the fireplace. You'll get an incredibly efficient instrument that converts wood to heat. | ||
| Ratbuell |
...or plug the chimney, if they're never going to use it for a fire. Make it "cosmetic". | ||
| Gentleman_jon |
How to tell when a Sag Harbor builder is lying: His lips are moving. You need a damper. And a new Chimney guy. Remind me to tell you..... | ||
| Mnscrounger |
I agree with the opinion you need an upper damper. When heating up our wood stove at the cabin (in MN winters) I get the fire going with the upper damper open, lowers closed, and door open at first, then cracked a bit as the flames and coals grow, to get a faster more direct airflow on the flames. Once the fire is chugging like a locomotive, I close the doors and top damper, and open the lower side dampers just enough to keep the flames curling in slow motion around the logs. I have thermometers above and below the upper damper. The upper damper definitely traps heat. If I open it with no other changes to the stove, the flue temp drops. and there is a big difference between them with it closed. I can get the single wall pipe to glow at the base collar of the stove with the lights out. The hot fire at the initial burn also clears out any creosote from the slow overnight burns. I check my class 3 stainless chimney flue every fall, and have not had to clean it in 25 years of seasonal use. | ||
| Bob_thompson |
Well stated Steve, agreed totally and especially nice to have an all stainless flue. On a history note; many of our pioneers had small one room log cabins with usually a stone chimney all the way from floor to out the roof and never had a damper but it was an advantage as the whole chimney got heated bottom to top from cooking, etc. and the stones radiated heat all night long even in winter. Now those were some tough people and times. | ||
| Etennuly |
I don't have an upper damper in my shop's somewhat primitive double barrel wood stove. It's air flow is all controlled by the inlet damper doors. The chimney pipe is 8" steel pipe twenty four feet to the top. I take the heat off from it's two 'over and under' 55 gallon drums. Without a damper the worst thing that I have seen happen is a backward flowing down draft. The wind can shift rapidly and blow back down the chimney. I have only seen it happen very infrequently in those 50+ mph gusting wind storms. It seems to me that a spring loaded damper might stop this from happening. I have had wood heat or fire places in three homes. All had an upper damper. All, at one time or another, with a nicely "throttled" fire(and attended), suffered a wind change(velosity or direction) causing smoke to back into the house, at least a small amount, where opening the damper all of the way seemed to have corrected the flow. | ||
| Panhead_dan |
If there is not some kind of damper, there is a good chance the house will burn down at some point. Flue fires or the combustion of soot and creosote that has built up within the chimney must be controlled or it can burn like a jet engine. Besides, it's nice to be able to control the fire as well as the draft when there is no fire. | ||
| Etennuly |
I have fixed four chimney fires in my life with wood fire heat. One of the last things you want to do is close the upper damper in my experience. When the chimney is going off like a jet engine, you still have the fire in the fire box. It too will take off being fanned by the 'jet'. The best, quickest, controlled mess, way I have put an out of control chimney fire is to first extinguish the fire in the fire box. Kill the heat source, #1 way to do that is to keep a bucket of slightly damp ashes or a bucket of dirt on hand. Two shovels of dirt or ashes and that fire box fire is instantly out. Then close off the intake air supply(doors and/or intake dampers). Usually the chimney fire will go out in a minute or two when it runs out of super heated supply air. Closing the upper damper may slow the fire(s), but it will fill the house with smoke also, and possibly cause the firebox fire to blow back into the house. You learn this stuff fast when all you have is 'in the house' wood fire heat. Oh.....and never leave a fire unattended.  | ||
| Bob_thompson |
Good read Vern and I would add; With many of the chimney fires I responded to as a firefighter here in my home town many times the flue/stack got hot enough to catch the roof rafters on fire and we had to somehow get into the attic to extinguish them especially when the flue was single wall construction. Good input from all. Court: are you still friends with that builder? | ||
| Mnscrounger |
Etenuly I've got one of those double barreled wood stoves in my garage at home. (My garage is detached, so I can get away with it.) That stove has a top damper, then 90 at the top barrel, and a cleanout tee outside the building. The stove isn't near as tight as the NightWatch at the cabin, but the short horizontal run in the flue probably hurts airflow so much an upper damper makes little difference. I'll bet if I damped the vertical run after the horizontal, I would be eating smoke immediately. I have a $350 chimney for a $75 stove. but I'll go with triple insulated stainless steel every time. Chimney fires are something I definitely do NOT want to experience. |
