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Everyone loves to curl up next to a warm and cozy fire during the winter, but the fire isn’t warm and cozy if you haven’t properly maintained your fireplace. A safe and clean fireplace is a warm and cozy fireplace, bottom line. So, how do you keep up on your fireplace maintenance? Lucky for you, we’ve compiled a list of tips and tricks for making sure you keep your fireplace and chimney liner in good shape so that when winter hits, you’re all set to throw in some fresh firewood and light it up.

8 Tips and Tricks for Fireplace Maintenance

  1. Never let a fire burn for longer than five hours, it’s not a furnace, they’re made for fires to last just a short duration.
  2. If you feel like your home is a bit smoky while a fire is burning, open up a window, the draft from the outside will go up the chimney and force the smoke out the chimney.
  3. Invest in a non-flammable rug to lie in front of the fireplace. This will better guarantee that no sparks will land on your existing carpeting and melt it.
  4. During your annual chimney inspection (which you should be doing), make sure they check to see if the rain cap is in good condition so no water comes down the chimney as well as any not-so-friendly critters who often lay their nests in chimney flue’s.
  5. If you regularly clean your fireplace after you allow a fire to burn, make sure you wait at least three days because that’s how long the coals stay warm for – warm enough to ignite another fire in fact.
  6. After every 80 fires you ignite, you should have a chimney sweep come and inspect it to make sure the chimney liner is still in good shape as well as the rest of the fireplace. While the certified chimney sweep is there to inspect it, have them show you some easy ways you can check your fireplace as well.
  7. Do your best to keep the firebox clean, this is the area where the logs burn. If you regularly light fires, you’ll want to try cleaning it once a week.
  8. Make sure you open the damper before you light the fire. Otherwise you’re putting your home at risk of igniting a house fire.

In the event that your chimney sweep finds you need a new chimney liner kit, order your parts from our Fireside Chimney Supply Store. We offer everything from full chimney liner kits to clay chimney pots. Whatever your fireplace needs are, we guarantee that we have it in our store.