Is Your Fireplace Drafty?

Everyone loves to cozy up to a warm fireplace in the cold months of the year, but when that fireplace is not in use, they are a major source of air leakage in a home. Here are some reasons why your fireplace may be drafty: 

1) Leaky or Open Fireplace Flues- Fireplaces have a "flue" that runs up the chimney. A flue is a big hole from your house to the sky. A closable damper is usually built right above the firebox to prevent air from leaking up the flue when the fireplace is not in use. However, most of these dampers are made of rough cast iron and don't seal well, especially when blackened with ash and creosote. If your damper isn't working properly or is open because a wood burning stove was installed, the air in your home that you paid to heat will continually leak up and out of your home. This creates drafts as new cold outside air is pulled into the house to replace the air that escaped. 

2) Abandoned Chimney- A chimney removes combustion gases from furnaces, boilers, and water heaters safely to the outside but new high efficient no longer use a masonry chimney. Instead, they exhaust out of the side wall of the house through a pvc pipe, and abandon the masonry chimney. This chimney can now leak and it siphons heat by conduction to the outside since it's a dense material and part is inside and part is outside. 

3) Wood Framed Fireplace Bump Out- Many homes have a metal gas fireplace instead of a masonry fireplace. The fireplace insert with a metal exhaust pipe is placed inside a wood framed bump out with siding on it, like the rest of the house. The metal fireplace housing is very leaky, allowing outside air from behind it to seep into your living space, and the wood framed housing is very leaky. There's nothing to stop the air from flowing in. Also, the metal housing is not insulated everywhere. Since metal is a great conductor, heat that you paid for is lost to the other side of the fireplace, and the cold metal assembly makes your home uncomfortable. 

Comfenergy can fix all of these fireplace comfort issues and much more. Call us to set up an appointment and have an estimator come out FOR FREE to find out exactly how much air leakage you have in your home and where it is coming from. You can reach us via our website, www.comfenergy.com, or call 1-800-604-2252.