Anyone know anything about fireplaces?

haylo33 · February 2014

We moved in to a new house and the house has a wood burning fireplace. We wanted to build a fire and make s'mores for valentines day. The previous owner never used it but had it swept almost 2 years ago. Can we use it or should we have it swept again ? We will only use it once in a while and it might not be worth the money to bring a chimney sweeper here.

lv2011 · February 2014

Have it swept again. It really should be done every year. You never know what critters have been in there or other debris has been blown in.

stinamarie412 · February 2014

lv2011 said:
Have it swept again. It really should be done every year. You never know what critters have been in there or other debris has been blown in.

Yup.

Katemr1146 · February 2014

Yeah, again. We do ours every year. It's not too expensive.

shaunamw · February 2014

We do our every year too.

sopsongbird · February 2014

My grandfather is a chimney sweep so I can tell you from experience that it is best to get your chimney cleaned every year, especially an insert. You will also want to make sure that you have a cap to prevent chimney swifts or other critters from getting into your flu. Make sure the sweep is certified, and that he removes the insert to correctly clean the flu inside.

Hope this helps!

awc1986 · February 2014

Deffo sweep before using it. Our house has cast iron fireplaces in 4 rooms and the family before us had 3 kids. There's all manner of crap stuffed in them.

crystalmir91385 · February 2014

While you should have it sweeped, my husband ignored me and started a fire in ours anyway. Everything was fine, but I would have killed him had anything happened. I should mention that we put a cap on ours after a bird fell in, so we knew there wasn't any random crap in there.

Mimaloo · February 2014

I'd have it cleaned and inspected just to be sure. Better safe than sorry.

iqwedding3 · February 2014

Inspection is important. There's tons of things that can go wrong with a chimney, you don't even know it's functional! You could get smoke and other toxic fumes leaking into the house without even knowing.

BeesKnees181 · February 2014

If anything bad happens your insurance will want to see that you had an inspection. We get our wood burning stove serviced every year and we use ours heavily - as in everyday in the winter months. The previous owner did not use it at all, and we had a chimney guy come out to take a look. He said because it hadn't been used it did not need to be cleaned (saved us some money, though we still had to pay for his service visit). He pulled a dead bird out of it, and gave us some pointers on keeping it clean and priming it. It was all useful information, and put my mind at ease.

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