Santa's Friend Chimney Service

Santa's Friend Chimney Service Blog

How a Chimney Cap Can Improve Draft

You may know how important a chimney cap is to a chimney because of how it prevents water from rain and melted snow as well as birds and animals from entering inside the chimney. A chimney cap is one of the least expensive ways you can protect your chimney from the extensive damage that water, birds, and animals can cause to the interior of the chimney. A chimney cap also has another helpful function in that it can improve any draft issues your chimney might be having. If you have ever noticed smoky air or unpleasant odors coming from your fireplace, your chimney has draft problems. Draft issues can also be hazardous such as poisonous gases like carbon monoxide remaining inside your chimney for longer than they should. Santa’s Friend Chimney Service would like to share some information from The Wood Heat Organization to explain exactly how a chimney cap can solve draft issues by improving how air flows through your chimney.

Chimney Caps & Draft - Jackson MS - Santa's Friend

Wind and Its Effects on Chimney Draft

To understand how draft works in a chimney, you need to know how the speed and direction of wind around the chimney affects the chimney draft. When air flows across the top of your chimney, it creates a driving pressure that increases the chimney draft because it helps pull the exhaust gases up and out of the chimney. In a perfect world, wind would always blow directly over the chimney; however, the wind is unpredictable and uncontrollable. If wind flows downward into the chimney after passing over a neighboring obstacle like a roof or tree or flows upward to the chimney from below its top, the wind creates a positive pressure over the chimney which can cause a negative effect on the outward flow of air from the chimney. That positive pressure results in chimney draft issues such as smelly, smoky air and toxic gases entering your home from the chimney through the fireplace.

How a Chimney Cap Improves Draft

Without a chimney cap installed at the top of your chimney, you will most likely experience problems with the draft. A standard chimney cap is better than no cap, but to most successfully battle wind problems, a chimney cap equipped with baffles, flow-directing panels, can do the trick by limiting the access of wind into the chimney. Designed to always create a driving pressure at the top of the chimney, a chimney cap with baffles will improve your chimney draft regardless from which direction or speed wind approaches your chimney.

Experiencing chimney draft issues? Contact us at Santa’s Friend Chimney Service to learn more about how we can solve that problem by installing a new draft-improving chimney cap.

By Jim Robinson on September 16th, 2015 | Tagged with: Tags: , , | Leave a Comment