Keeping Santa Out Of Your Chimney To Save Energy...

One of the ways to lose a lot of heat is to leave the flue open on the chimney when you're not using it. Even if you shut the flue, many of them do not seal all that well. If you have any damage within your fireplace, like if your heat tubes have rusted out, you can have a large volume of cold air (ashy air at that) come in. This cold air can come in when you run your furnace, use your bathroom exhaust vent or burn a fire in a second fireplace that might be elsewhere in the house. ...And then there there is that big guy in the red and white suit, should you let him in?

"Does Santa really come down the chimney, and if so, how does he stay clean?"

For a damaged fireplace where the heat tubes are rusted out the best bet might be to just seal that chimney altogether. The same might true if you never use your fireplace or chimney at all. Make sure the fireplace has something to indicate that no one should burn a fire in it if you do block the chimney or you could create a hazard. Blocking the chimney was a priority for us to save energy and breath cleaner ash free air. Even with the opening of the a fireplace that we do not use blocked, and the flue closed, the cold air was coming in through some rusted out heat tubes that were above the firebox. The Fireplace repair people estimated a $20,000 repair to replace those heat tubes so blocking the chimney was an oblivious choice. We have two fireplaces, and one of them was repaired and cleaned as the heat tubes were undamaged. The other damaged fireplace that could not be repaired could be replaced with something more modern like a wood stove, pellet stove or an alcohol burning stove.

I decided to block the damaged chimney myself after studying up on how to do it. On the chimney that works properly, there was no screen over the opening, so some time back we had a duck fly down the chimney and get stuck. We let the duck out, but the duck let us know that a screen was needed. The damaged chimney had a screen so I decided to swap the "Wind Directional Caps" from one chimney opening to the other while I was at it. I had some cement fiber board on hand so I used a utility knife to cut it to size to cover the opening at the top of the chimney. With only a few passes with the blade to score both sides the board broke easily right down the line. I used caulking to seal the board to the opening once the Wind Directional Caps had been removed. To remove the caps just took using a cordless drill/driver to loosen the bolts.

Safety should be your first concern if you attempt something like this yourself. It is a long way down and the caps can be heavy. Otherwise, we will have to see if the big guy in the red suit, any ducks or monsters can make past that screen and get down the chimney. And if they do, will they stay clean, the duck sure didn't? That duck flew out of here like the proverbial "bat out of hell" and went straight for the lake at nearly full speed, plunging in head first.