You put a lot of time, effort, and money into making your home as energy efficient as possible. However, an excessively sealed home leads to an annoying issue with your fireplace. Downdrafts bring outside air into your home through your chimney. This can cause issues with your home’s environmental controls and can lead to higher heating and cooling costs. However, downdrafts can also cause issues by bringing smelly odors into your home. You don’t need to live with a smelly home anymore. We can eliminate your chimney downdraft issues and get rid of embarrassing odors once and for all!
How do downdrafts occur?
Having an airtight home is a good thing for your home’s energy usage. However, an area that often gets overlooked when making your home more energy efficient is your chimney. Just like a window or door, your chimney and fireplace is an opening to the outdoors and must be accounted for when making your home energy efficient. When air can’t flow freely in and out of your home, the air pressure inside your home can become less than the air pressure outside, turning the inside of your home into a weak vacuum. This is not an issue in well-sealed homes. However, unsealed locations in your home are prime entry points for air. For many homeowners, the fireplace sucks air into the home. It subsuquently brings smelly chimney odors with it.
How do I remedy issues with chimney odors?
A short-term solution to downdrafts is to simply open a window in your home. This will allow your home to depressurize, stopping the vacuum effect. However, this solution isn’t usually efficient if you are operating your home’s environmental controls at the same time. Another short-term solution is to have your chimney swept by a professional chimney sweep. Cleaning out the foul smelling creosote from your chimney will help reduce the odor coming from your chimney. However, this short lived solution will not keep chimney odors away for long.
For a long-term solution, we suggest sealing your chimney to prevent the drawing of air into your home. This can usually be done by installing a damper. There are two types of damper that we install, throat dampers and top sealing dampers. Although both dampers work well, if home efficiency is your goal, we suggest installing a top mounted damper since it provides a better seal.
You don’t have to live in a smelly home anymore! If you want to rid your home of chimney odors for good, we here at The Chimney Guy are ready to help you. Let one of our home efficiency experts inspect your chimney by scheduling an appointment online or calling The Chimney Guy at 920-830-1920.
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