Do you have a room in your house that has a fireplace, and is really hard to cool in the summer? Your fireplace chimney snorkels in hot, humid, dirty air from your roof all summer.

Metal dampers are just rough-closures and have no weatherstripping to them, so they let a lot of air past. So when you close up your house and turn on the AC for the summer, your home will often operate at a negative pressure and start drawing in outside air from the path of least resistance. It is really important to air seal a fireplace since it accounts for 13% of air leakage to an average home.

Below is a video of a Smoke Pencil demonstrating how much outside air a fireplace chimney snorkels in with a closed damper and a closed glass doors.

Your fireplace chimney snorkels in hot humid air from your roof. You may not feel the heat draft coming in, but often you can smell a musty smokey smell that is present in the house as your fireplace chimney snorkels in chimney stink with the warm air.

It is important to plug a fireplace or wood stove chimney with  a Chimney Balloon or Flueblocker in the summer to prevent chimney snorkeling like this. A tight fitting chimney plug will force the home to draw make-up air from another location, other than the dirty snorkel that is your chimney.

Have you ever gone snorkeling at the beach and set your mask and snorkel kit in the sand for a moment?

The sand, grime, salt water, and beachy smell get all over it. Now imagine grabbing that snorkel kit, not wiping it off, and popping it right into your mouth and taking a big inhale…* cough*cough*. That is the equivalent of what  a fireplace chimney snorkels into your home all summer long. Only your home is breathing in hot, humid, ash and creosote tinged, dirty air. And in turn you and your family are breathing it in too.

You can avoid all of that heat, humidity and chimney stink from closing your flue low and tight with a Chimney Balloon or a Flueblocker from our online fireplace store.