Our Company Blog

Maintaining a clean smoke chamber

By now, you understand the importance of keeping your chimney clean. You may not know the importance of keeping one element of your chimney particularly clean: The smoke chamber.

What is the smoke chamber?

The smoke chamber is the bottommost portion of your chimney, located just above the damper. The smoke angles inward and upward toward the chimney flue. When your fireplace is in use, the smoke chamber funnels the smoke from your fires into the chimney flue.

Why is it so important to maintain a clean smoke chamber?

Smoke chambers take a lot of abuse. When a fire is burning, the smoke chamber is subjected to extremely high temperatures. Any creosote or debris that has built up within the smoke chamber is a fire hazard. The extreme heat from the fire can cause creosote or debris to ignite. In fact, many chimney fires originate within the smoke chamber.

Additionally, creosote and soot can build up rapidly within the smoke chamber. The shape of the smoke chamber can cause smoke to bounce around the chamber when fire is burning, causing creosote to form. On top of that the smoke chamber is also tricky to clean. Because of the smoke chamber’s shape and location, the smoke chamber isn’t easily seen or accessed during a chimney sweeping. It takes special care and attention from the chimney sweep to ensure that the smoke chamber is clean and free from any damage or weaknesses.

What else should you know about your smoke chamber?

During your annual chimney sweeping and inspection, it also is wise to ask your chimney sweep about your smoke chamber’s construction. Smoke chambers should be smooth, to help smoke find an easy path to the chimney, but many masonry smoke chambers are improperly constructed. In those chimneys, smoke chambers are feature “steps” caused by the staggering of the bricks, causing the smoke to swirl around and remain in the smoke chamber longer than it should.

If your smoke chamber is improperly constructed, it can be corrected with parging. Parging involves smoothing the smoke chamber walls with a specialized masonry material. Parging your chimney’s smoke chamber makes your chimney safer and increases the efficiency of your chimney. Often, parging the smoke chamber can resolve fireplace smoking problems.

How can you ensure that your smoke chamber is clean and properly constructed?

As with most chimney maintenance, maintaining your smoke chamber begins with a chimney sweeping and inspection. During your sweeping, make sure you ask your chimney technician about the cleanliness, condition and construction of your smoke chamber. If you want to ensure that your smoke chamber is clean, properly constructed and designed to keep your home safe from the threat of a chimney fire, call Your Chimney Sweep to schedule a sweeping and inspection today!

How To Dispose Of Your Wood Ashes

If you have a wood-burning fireplace, insert or heating stove, you undoubtedly have ashes to get rid of. Cleaning and ridding your fireplace of ashes isn’t a challenging task, but there are some tips and tricks that can help you to properly care for your fireplace and put all of those ashes to good use.

Tips for clearing away fireplace ashes.

Clearing away fireplace ashes seems easy enough, but there are some things you should know before you begin shoveling and sweeping ashes. First, it’s actually best to keep a bed of ashes, about 1 inch deep, in your fireplace during the fire-burning season. The cushion of ashes will insulate your fire to help it warm and grow faster. At the end of the season, however, your firebox should be thoroughly cleared of ashes. The ashes can retain moisture and cause metal firebox components to rust.

Ashes also are highly acidic in nature, and they can degrade your firebox if they are left standing for too long. When you are ready to clear away ashes, the first step is to make sure the ash bed has cooled completely. It’s best to wait at least 24 hours after a fire has burned out, as hot embers can hide within the ashes. Use a metal shovel to scoop ashes into a metal bucket. The bucket should have a tight-fitting lid, as any smoldering ashes or embers can emit carbon dioxide, posing a hazard. After you are confident that the ashes are complete cooled and free of burning embers within the ash bucket, they are ready for disposal.

Tips for ash disposal.

Your bagged ashes can go right in with your regular garbage, but you can put those ashes to good use! Ashes are a gardener’s dream. Great for plants that love calcium, like tomatoes, and they can be turned directly into the soil during planting. Ashes also can form a barrier from slugs and snails around plants; just sprinkle your ashes in a ring around your plants, and any slimy pests can’t inch over the rough ashes.

Ashes have uses beyond the garden, as well. During the winter, ashes can be sprinkled on ice to encourage melting, or sprinkled on driveways to increase tire traction. They can be scrubbed into cement walks and driveways to hide stains, and they can deodorize a stinky pet. With their abrasive nature, ashes can be mixed with water to scrub the glass on fireplace doors or even to polish silver. If you’re an ambition do-it-yourselfer, you can even use your fireplace ashes to make your own soap!

And don’t forget your annual cleaning!

As you clear away ashes for the spring, don’t forget about your annual chimney sweeping and inspection! Spring is the perfect time to have your fireplace cleaned for the year. Call Your Chimney Sweep to schedule an appointment; we’ll sweep away all of the soot and ashes to keep your fireplace clean and safe from ash-induced damage.