How safe is your fireplace?

When winter winds blow outside, nothing beats the indoor warmth of a fireplace. Wood-burning fireplaces are designed to safely provide comfort, warmth and relaxation. Maintaining your fireplace regularly will ensure that it operates in the safest, most efficient manner possible. But before lighting the first fire of the season, there are a few important fireplace safety tips to remember.

Wood-burning fireplaces are potential sources of house fires. Embers popping out of an unscreened fire or chimney fires from creosote build-up are just two of the hazards that can be avoided. Wood burning fireplaces can also negatively affect indoor air quality. According to Burn Wise, a program of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, “Smoke may smell good, but it’s not good for you.”

Any smoke escaping from the firebox into the room means the fireplace isn’t operating properly. Also, since fires consume a large volume of air as they burn, it’s possible to create negative pressure in the home as air from outside is drawn indoors to replace the air consumed by the fire. If that “make-up” air is drawn back in through the flues of gas- or oil-burning furnaces and water heaters, it can also draw deadly gases, like carbon monoxide, into the home; this is called “backdrafting.”

Inspect your fireplace
With a flashlight, inspect the flue damper to make sure it opens, closes, and seals properly. If the damper doesn’t seal well, you’ll lose a tremendous amount of heat from the home when the fireplace isn’t in use. If it doesn’t cleanly open during usage, it will negatively affect the ventilation of the smoke and gases from the fire. With the damper open, check the flue for material such as animal nests or other foreign objects.

You should be able to see daylight at the top. Inspect the fireplace surround, hearth, and firebox to make sure there are no cracked bricks or missing mortar. Have a cap installed at the top of the chimney to avoid the possibility that debris or animals can block the chimney. Damage inside the firebox is serious. Also, check for obvious signs of moisture inside the firebox, which could mean a faulty cap.

Wood burning