Ideas to get draft started for Fireplace, Brick chimney with liner

[Catfish Hunter]

My friend has a fireplace in the basement with a brick chimney (external) that is class A lined. He is having trouble getting his draft started on the these cold, sub-zero days. Any ideas how he can make that work? He hasn't had any issues until our cold snap so I think he just needs some minor heat in the chimney to get it flowing?

 

[jatoxico]

Is this a new place to him? Reason I'm asking is first thing is he should be sure its clean and damage free. Not that that will necessarily make it behave any different but if he has a dirty system and touches off a chimney fire in a compromised chimney, well that could be bad.

Sounds like he has all the boxes checked for down drafting and depending on how bad it is it can be livable or unusable. Have him research stack effect.

If it just needs a little push people use hair dryers and heat guns, torches or even top down fires. I use paper but my flue is cleaned regularly.

The concern I would have is if its down drafting hard that even after establishing a good fire that, as the fire dies down and is just coals (say over night) that there's no more heat for the chimney but the coals are still pushing out CO so if the draft stalls you have a problem. I don't think that's too common but I wouldn't make any assumptions.

 

[Catfish Hunter]

Is this a new place to him? Reason I'm asking is first thing is he should be sure its clean and damage free. Not that that will necessarily make it behave any different but if he has a dirty system and touches off a chimney fire in a compromised chimney, well that could be bad.

Sounds like he has all the boxes checked for down drafting and depending on how bad it is it can be livable or unusable. Have him research stack effect.

If it just needs a little push people use hair dryers and heat guns, torches or even top down fires. I use paper but my flue is cleaned regularly.

The concern I would have is if its down drafting hard that even after establishing a good fire that, as the fire dies down and is just coals (say over night) that there's no more heat for the chimney but the coals are still pushing out CO so if the draft stalls you have a problem. I don't think that's too common but I wouldn't make any assumptions.

Thanks I will relay the info. I think he had it cleaned and inspected before he used it.

In the really cold day he used a butane torch and it did draft but he scooped the coals out before bed to prevent what you described


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[kevreh]

I have problems with my draft every few fires. Usually I try to start the fire near the top, and blow a propane torch to the top to get things going. Every few fires I get a decent amount of smoke in the room, bummer! Tell him to test first by burning small piece of paper and watching the smoke. I have a small quartz space heater by my desk I’m going to use next time I don’t have draft.