Post by : Admin
02-May-2020
Adding a fireplace to your home is one of the best ways to reduce your energy bills—a lot of people would also argue that using wood to heat your home is also environmentally friendly. Using alternative heating methods like wood has become quite a popular residential heating method with an increasing number of people opting for this solution. None of this is surprising considering the fact that using a fireplace can bring down your energy costs by as much as $900 a month.
All of these advantages of a fireplace only hold true if the chimney and the fireplace itself is working efficiently. Leaky or draughty chimneys will do the reverse and raise your energy bills by letting heat out of the house—sometimes fireplace design faults can also cause these problems. Luckily, most of these problems are easily resolved through routine maintenance and some minor changes to your fireplace.
The damper is a sort of installed in the chimney flue that is supposed to keep the fireplace covered when it’s not in use and to keep the heat inside when a fire is lit. Statistics indicate that traditional fireplaces have heating efficiency of 56%–70% (up to 30% of heat is lost through the chimney) assuming that they are working in—without a damper, the number goes to 20%.
If you feel that your fireplace isn’t heating up your house, you should get the damper checked out and replaced for good measure.
Cracking chimney flues act as conduits for heat to escape out to be replaced by cold air to compromise the heating efficiency in your fireplace. If it isn’t the damper that is causing energy loss, it’s very likely that lose bricks or cracks in the chimney are making it inefficient.
As a general rule, you should get your chimney inspected by licensed chimney sweeps at leastonce a year and get them swept and repaired to minimize the heat losses.
You can also renovate your fireplace so that it generates more heat. It’s completely possible for you to make custom alterations to the fireplace to make ensure minimal heat loss. Common changes people make to their fireplaces include deepening the firebox or installing vents that can in bring in air to keep the fire burning.
Creative Masonry in Chimney is a premium chimney maintenance and repair service working in West Harford, Simsbury, Bristol and Burlington, Connecticut. We offer all kinds of chimney services in CT. In addition to our chimney maintenance services, masonry services like foundation repair and more. Get in touch with us today for more information.
