Why does smoke come into the room when I use my wood-burning fireplace?
In Flat Rock, the answer is usually the age of the house. Many of our homes date to the 1800s with grand, oversized open masonry fireplaces and clay flue liners that have spent a century weathering — an opening too big for its flue spills smoke, and cracked, crumbling liners leak away the draft that's left.
Beautiful hearths, imperfect draft
Historic Flat Rock's fireplaces were built to make a statement, with firebox openings far larger than the flues above them can realistically serve. A chimney pulls only so hard, and when the mouth is oversized the surplus smoke rolls out into the room. Century-old clay liners compound it: they crack, spall, and shed sections, opening gaps that bleed off draft. These same grand open hearths also pull cold outside air down into the room between fires, which is why so many owners describe a house that never feels quite sealed.
The everyday layer
On top of the sizing and the aging liner sits the ordinary set — a cold flue on a cool valley morning, a winter's creosote, and a damper that's warped with age. Any one of those turns an already marginal draft into a smoky one.
Preserving the look, fixing the smoke
We inspect the liner, sizing, damper, and draft, and pull the Henderson County permit for relining. A sealed insert — wood, or natural gas on the mains — with a correctly sized liner fixes the draftiness while preserving the historic firebox's character. We're 30 minutes south of Emma Road. Call (828) 545-0525.
Fireplace help in Flat Rock
We install and service fireplaces throughout Flat Rock and the rest of Henderson County — just 30 minutes south from our Asheville-area showroom.
Related questions
- Why does my fireplace smoke only when I first light it?
- Why does my fireplace smoke only on windy days?
- Why does my fireplace backdraft when the furnace or a bathroom fan is running?
- Why does my wood stove puff smoke into the room when I open the door?
- Why doesn't my wood-burning insert draft as well as it used to?