FIREPLACE SERVICE

Did you ever hear of a “hearth professional?” the hearth professional is a person who has been certified by the National Fireplace Institute (NPI), the professional certification division of the Hearth, Patio, and Barbecue Education Foundation (HPBEF) of Arlington, VA, a non-profit educational entity.

The NPI offers educational and certification procedures leading to the title of Master Hearth Professional, composed of certifications for specialists involved with gas burning appliances, wood burning appliances, and pellet burning appliances. Their raison d’être is public safety.

Competent installation and servicing, including repair, is very important. It is also important to recognize that there are size, type, and feature of the various appliances that are installed. The specific fuels used and the configuration of the venting system of your fireplace become important, as well.

Elements of Fireplace Service

The question must be asked: when we discuss servicing a fireplace, are we talking installation, repair, or merely monitoring.

There is a one-word answer to the question: Yes.

Fireplace service should happen at least annually, and, of course, prior to the heating season. These are the steps:

•    The process starts with a chimney inspection, where a knowledgeable fireplace professional must determine how contaminated the exhaust flues are. Chimney walls that are soot or creosote covered are a primary cause of chimney fires. Your fire insurance carrier will be very interested to know that this assessment has been done.

•    If it is determined that the chimney is dirty, the next step is to employ a chimney sweeping service. A professional chimney sweeper will be aware of the various kinds of contaminants in the chimney and have the necessary chemicals and tools to remove them.

•    Once the chimney is clean, a determination must be made regarding the need for any masonry repair. At this point, if deficiencies are found, these tasks must be done:

•    Chimney rebuilding. This is done only if the chimney is in such sad state of repair that there is a fire hazard present that should prevent additional use. Sometimes that portion of the chimney that has been exposed to the weather may need to be replaced “from the roof up.” A fireplace service must have qualified masons available to do that work.

•    Chimney relining. Nowadays, chimneys are built with liners—tile, ceramic, or metal. That’s simply the way they’re built now, and several entities mandate that construction—fire laws, insurance companies, or local ordinances. Older chimneys or others in need of internal repairs—including those that vent a fireplace—may need relining, and that should be done before the heating season begins.

•    Exterior brick face and stone installation may require replacement of bricks (or stones) and mortar in response to the weathering placed upon the chimney.

•    Pointing or repointingmay have to be done, either internally or externally. Technically, pointing the masonry involves the placement of mortar into joints to fill defects or bind newly prepared masonry.Repointing is what you must do when the masonry begins to fall apart. Here you will cut into or rake the joints to correct a joint made deficient or defective by the passage of time. A variation of these two is called tuck-pointing, which is largely a cosmetic procedure to distinguish the masonry color from the mortar color.

Firebox Considerations

In a masonry fireplace, a mason will use firebrick for the firebox—the place where the fire actually is built. These bricks are refractory and are bound using fireclay mortar, handling large heat loads. However, like all bricks, they can crack and crumble, creating a fire hazard.
Cracked fireboxes must be replaced or repaired. Patches are often acceptable, but new firebricks may need to be laid using refractory mortar. The same pointing, repointing, and tuck-pointing procedures used in any brickwork apply here, as well.

Other Considerations

Often a fireplace service will involve modifications to the use of the fireplace itself. Included in this will be the installation of wood burning, pellet, or gasstoves, including a gas fireplace or gas log appliances, even the addition of gas to an existing installation.

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WOOD STOVE INSTALLATION

You have selected a wood stove to heat your home. What’s involved with a wood stove installation? Let’s start with what is required to evacuate the products of combustion.

Chimney Selection

Chimneys will be either lined masonry or a Class A (High Temperature) insulated metal, commonly called “all fuel” chimney pipe. The class is assigned by the Underwriter’s Laboratory (UL), the organization for safety science.

Wood Stoves and Fireplace Chimneys

Woodstoves often are installed in lined(full or partial) fireplace chimneys. If the chimney is not lined, fire laws will require it.

Some cautions about using the fireplace chimney for a woodstove: don’t use prefabricated fireplaces that have little or no clearance from the firebox.

Stovepipes

The interiorstovepipe is the connection between your stove and the approved chimney.A stovepipe is made of black sheet metal and takes the smoke and gasses vertically through a roof or connected to a chimney. That stovepipe may have a damper connected, and comes in single or double wall units.

The exterior stovepipe will be insulated piping used on the outside of the building where a fireplace or other chimney are not used.

Clearances are very important for stovepipes. The Underwriter’s Laboratory specifies a clearance of eighteen inches from a wall or a ceiling to allow heat dispersion. This can be modified with the use of heat shields or double-wall stovepipe.

Floors and Walls

Whatever the stove is set on, it must be noncombustible. Metal flooring is often used. The Underwriter’s Laboratory recommends that all noncombustible flooring must be at least 8 inches wider at the sides and 18 inches in front of the loading doors.UL recommends heat shields on the wall sides of the stove.

Safety

Safety is the primary consideration for a wood stove installation. There are National Fire Protection Association (NFPA) standards and local building codes to follow.


Installation Methods

Single story woodstove installation requires the black stovepipe to connect either with a chimney or with an insulated chimney at a support box below the ceiling level. Above the ceiling and the roof, chimney pipe will be installed until the height is at least three feet above the roof and at least two feet higher than other parts of the building. Tall, straight, chimneys work better and give better draft.

A variation of this will be the installation of the system where the roof is so slanted a flush ceiling installation is impossible. Your stove professional will know how.

The second type is for insulated pipe alone, where the stovepipe is passed through a wall, connects to the insulated support box on the exterior wall of the building. Then the insulated pipe is added, conforming to the scenario above. All chimneys should be capped.

Masonry Chimneys

There are two ways that wood stoves can be correctly installed in masonry chimneys:

•    Sealed and vented into the firebox (and up the existing chimney).

•    Connected to insulated pipe, which then travels up the existing chimney.

If you are going to vent your wood stove up an existing fireplace chimney, the flue liner must be at least the size of the stovepipe that connects the stove to the fireplace.

It works best if the chimney is located inside the building, rather than on the periphery. In all cases, it should be insulated with masonry insulation.The flue liner must allow for expansion. A “cast-in-place” liner will do this admirably.
The safest masonry use for a wood stove is to line that masonry chimney with stainless steel pipe, particularly for installation in a chimney with an outdoor exposure. Again, no wood stove in a metal fireplace.

Damper and Chimney Cap

When it was operated as a fireplace, there was a damper to control the airflow up your chimney. When the fireplace cooled, the damper was closed to keep the heat in the building. Installation of a stove removes the need for that damper. You must now install a blocking plate, which must be fabricated.

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CHIMNEY RELINING

There was a time when chimneys were not lined.Much property was lost due to the lack of that protection.
In 1904, the National Fire Prevention Association (NFPA) prepared its first codification on chimneys and fireplaces. That codification has undergone many changes. The most recent standard is NFPA 211, 2013.Here we will concentrate on Chapter 4 (General Requirements) and Chapter 7 (Masonry Chimneys).

Naturally, any change in the lining of the chimney must be done according to current NFPA standards in order for that property to be insurable.

First, from Chapter 4 (General Requirements) we get this: “Castable” or plastic refractories used to line chimneys or connectors shall be the equivalent in resistance to heat and erosion by flue gases to that of… fireclay brick.” Fireclay brick has a heat transfer thermal conductivity of 500 degrees Centigrade, 932 degrees Fahrenheit. It becomes more important, however, when the lining supports are considered. According to NFPA 211, Chapter 4, “Lining made of castable or plastic [ceramic] refractories shall be secured to the supporting walls by anchors made of corrosion-resistant steel capable of supporting the refractoryload at 1,500 degrees Fahrenheit, 816 degrees Centigrade.” Some definitions might help:

•    Thermal conductivity is "the quantity of heat transmitted through a unit thickness of a material - in a direction normal to a surface of unit area - due to a unit temperature gradient under steady state conditions," according to www.engineeringtoolbox.com.

•    Castable liners: to begin with, a castable liner exists to protect the chimney’s masonry from corrosion from the products of combustion. It’s mixed like cement and fills the void spaces around the flues. This liner would be perhaps the best choice among all the options for your chimney.However, it may not be the easiest choice for relining one.

•    Refractory—its definition is “resistance to heat.”

It follows that since yours is not a new construction, you’ll be faced with a retrofit of your existing chimney. Unless that chimney has fallen, you must now reline it to fit the standards as closely as possible. Therefore, we will assume a standing structure placed on a code-matching foundation.It’s small consolation to know that if the house burns down, the chimney will continue to stand. The mason who works on your chimney relining must know:

•    The concrete or noncombustible material on which the chimney has been placed has a fire resistance rating of not less than 3 hours.

•    That if it was built according to existing code, it does not require the building itself in order to stand and the load is transferred to the ground, and

•    There may be limitations on corbeling of masonry chimneys, processes of widening the chimney’s base. There are many requirements for corbels; only somebody familiar with the NFPA Standard 211 should be selected to do the work.

The standard is extensive. There are requirements for flue sizes, proximity to roof structures, pass-throughs for ceilings and floors. There are numerous standards for cleanout facilities, including standards for doors—distances from floors and markings for the door.

The person who works on this chimney relining must know where the bottom of the flue must be positioned. He must know how to “firestop” all spaces through which the chimney passes with noncombustible material. He must know to use galvanized steel or noncombustible sheet material where the chimney passes close to wood joists, beams, or headers.

There are other concerns. Included here are reinforcement for seismic and wind activity, thimbles (pass-through fittings for chimneys) and smoke tests where the chimney is proved to be tight.

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MASONRY HVAC

It’s called Heating, Venting, and Air Conditioning (HVAC) and some components involve a knowledge of masonry. Let’s look at what it might entail:

•    Heating: There are many kinds of heating methods, each with specific requirements. If you heat with a fireplace or wood stove, there is a chimney to be considered. In addition to the logs (hopefully oak), you may have blocks, bricks, and pellets—each with a different set of National Fire Prevention Association (NFPA) standards.

•    Venting: Vents constructed of masonry must allow for the removal of moisture and accumulated dust in the same manner as vents produced with sheet metal.Filtration, both manual and electronic, will apply here.

•    Cooling: There are fewer concerns about cooling relative to chimneys themselves, but moisture and condensation should be considered where vents are constructed with masonry.

Wood Burning Considerations

The NFPA offers these general rules for wood burning stoves:

•    Have a professional install them. There are many NFPA requirements for the construction/lining of chimneys and the connection of wood burning equipment.

•    Some communities proscribe the use of wood stoves. Existing fireplaces will be fitted with gas burners.

•    This seems obvious, but keep combustible items away from your woodstove. The danger is sparking, as anyone who has ever burned planed pine will attest. Heat transfer may overcome the flashpoint of other combustibles, such as newspaper.

•    Chimneys should be inspected regularly. Some vendors will recommend that you have it done very fall, just before heating season. Some vendors will recommend that you have it done for every two cords of wood (or comparable pellet use) consumed. The specific needs can certainly be clarified by your local fire officials.


•    One of the advantages (among many) of burning pellets is that they are recycled wood and are, by definition, dry. NFPA standards specify burning dry wood to cut the smoke and reduce the creosote.

•    A fireplace should have a screen to keep sparks inside the firebox. Ash quantities will vary according to the fuel used, but pellets produce less ash.

•    Most important, according to NFPA recommendations, is that you have both smoke and carbon monoxide detectors and alarms positioned where they can provide notification and sufficient time to vacate the premises.

Other Concerns

The above dealt with masonry chimneys that permit evacuation of products of combustion. How does that apply to gas appliances or oil furnaces? Both have NFPA venting and smoke concerns. Many homes are now built with metal or insulated pipe. The vendor who handles both the chimney construction or repair and the installation of heating units will be qualified to provide the answers you need.

Masonry is less a problem with air conditioning systems, largely because there is little, if any, acidity in the effluent produced. For that reason, masonry is often used for venting such equipment, particularly in homes that are entirely brick, stone, or concrete.

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