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Why not have a hole for air flow on the bottom as you would in a kiln so the heat, smoke and other gases can go up and and fresh air can come in from the bottom? Is that a thing?

Top Seal Dampers are great if you don't have gas in your fireplace. If you have gas top seal dampers are not allowed by the National Fire Protection Agency (NFPA). You have to have a damper clamp on your damper and they cannot be added to a top seal damper. The damper is a clamp that screws onto the the edge of your damper to hold it open slightly. This allows the gas fumes to escape your chimney so it isn't exiting into your home. Homes today are sealed so tight that you have no airflow to allow your house to breathe. Not to mention that caps are also regulated by the NFPA and may not allow a top seal damper in your cap.

Thank you so much for your comprehensive and educational topic .

Take a drink when he days he hates dampers

Smokey says... burn weeds not trees...😅

Wow. I appreciate this information. Never knew about cap dampers, but definitely like the idea.

You still need to make it big enough for Santa to get in.

🤡

Simple nasonry skills need to be learned and more videos of a simple but basic nature can be very valuable. People need to hear about things that they never before heard about or had the faintest idea about. Thanks for taliking about this and the history. This is a very old sunject in actuality and not simple at all. I am a life long wood burner to this very day.

Could you explain how a chimney chamber of next door neighbour (victorian house) causes a toxic smell in my home? I understand the fireplace is mirrored and attached but the chimney chambers split to gave separate chimneys on separate roofs. Could there be a crack somewhere?

Not gonna lie. Ive enjoyed a couple of your videos based soley off a couple points you made. BUT now after seeing this i have to start taking these videos with a grain of salt. Your using facts that you regurgitate out of the code book than sprinckle in some b.s . Beginning of video you say some cotter pins are hard to get out so you cut them. Then you say later in the video at 2:22 you cut all the cotter pins off and replace them for easy removal next time. But you allways cut them off ?! Like make it make sense. I clean and repair masonry built and prefab appliances daily. And in the last 10 years ive never had to cut a cotter pin cause its seized on to the damper plate?!. And ive seen my fair share of wtf moments. Its a cotter pin, not a fine thread galvanized bolt with locktight. And double ratchet handles which i know them as double pivot come off the frame the exact same way as the push and hook. Aka with a cotter pin. Just leave the handle hanging on the frame and move the damper plate. And in my opinion rotatory dampers are the easiest to remove?! 1 allen key to losen the set screw on the worm gear which most people are missing anyways, and just pull the whole handle out of the wall and the damper plate with the worm gear mechanism will come out in one piece. Stop trying to over complicate the easy stuff. I literally reset dampers and replace hardware all the time for "free" during a standard 12 point inspection as a courtesy . Takes less than a literal minute, and less than $1 and i make my money back by actually solving real technical problems. Stop nickle and diming people for the sake of "doing it right." Your charging them for the sweep already. And not cleaning the shelf or damper plate wouldn't be a full sweep. That's like McDonald's charging you extra for napkins. It already comes with it! And fyi. It aint that hard to clean a shelf properly even with the damper plate in place. Its just most people are lazy and dont want to go roll up there sleeves and do what there getting paid to do.

As a retired Paramedic/Firefighter from the state of Florida I've not heard of too many chimney fires in the county where I live that I worked in but we did have a few and they were usually rapidly extinguished since we got there quickly. It would be nice to know what causes homes to catch fire since the chimney is supposed to be able to keep the Flames inside of it. Maybe it's poorly sealed chimneys where flames are able to get past some joints that are missing compound but it is not a subject I'm very familiar with.

Talk about tell not show

A home with a fireplace is very valuable nowadays because of the cost of a heating oil in the shortages that are being falsely purported so what is always good but the fact is your house is your most expensive investment your chimney is its breather keep your lungs clean clean your chimney man😂🎉❤

The take away message is, BURN DRY WOOD, BURN IT HOT and... properly clean your chimney EVERY heating season! ...and... HAVE your system inspected every year by a licensed professional. Stay toasty my friends!

So how different is this from 1800s chimneys?

The best yet on creosote with good advice but please get rid of music.

very annoying distracting music, cant concentrate on what he is saying. shame as its very informative.

Hello Dear friend.. Have a question please: Is there a proportion for width and length measurements of a brick chimney liner ? Thank you

Nice hat Beny Hills !

Good videos Ray. I have watched 3 vids and your breakdown on each topic is clearly explained with good supporting images. Thanks.

Nice vids! In my area, all roofers seem to bend the counter flashing out at the top and fill with Solar Seal. I rarely see any new counter or step flashing cut into the brick. A lost art I guess here in Detroit. Some east coast roofers told me on FB they always cut it in.

This is way way too much info for the situation.

My clean out door is actually in my basement right next to where I keep my collection of oily rags.

crucial information. background music was too loud for me.

Great video with everything I needed to know thanks

I've replaced a few Firefox before and I can promise you that it's gonna be well over $3.000

Thanks to bad I'm a steel stud framer because I'd work for a guy like you.

I looked this word up because in the song "Deportees" The Lyrics say "oranges are left in the Creosote dump" - the song was written in the 1940's - maybe that was a thing back then

Pretty neat! I think it would work well for some people calling to schedule or have basic questions. If the customer is straightforward, patient, and smart then this is a cheap way to have a solid assistant. My issues: Many of my customers are on the older end and would automatically hang up if they knew they were talking to an AI, no matter how perfect the AI is. Even I would likely hang up. There would need to be an option to just leave a voicemail or possibly talk to a person to not lose potential customers. Customers sometimes ramble. I've had people talk for 6 minutes straight about the issues they're having. I highly doubt this agent would be able to effectively respond to something like that. AI and chatGPT in particular has issues. It can be a yes man where it says what you want to hear. It would need to be able to disagree with the customer at times. chatGPT can cite things it knows as if they are well known facts, when they are completely made up. If someone was asking technical questions, then I would only trust the response if it was written by a human, and if you have to write out every single response then it's not really an AI, it's more of a Google assistant/Alexa. The cost of potentially $15 an hour for this definitely seems high when combined with the negatives I mentioned (set up fee is also a factor). $6-$10 would be much more reasonable in my opinion. Obviously you can do whatever you want with it.

You need to create a video of a converted masonry chimney, such as what is found in a home built around 1900, to one with a stainless steel liner going up from a wood stove to the top of the stack, perhaps 24 feet straight up. You also need to create a video regarding the different types of brick typically found in a house built around 1900. There are hard brick which is found above the roof, and soft brick found from under the roof to below the hearth. Soft brick isn't bad if you know how to use it. First think is to saturate the brick with water before using it, or it will draw water out of the nortar before it cures, making the mortar joints weak. Another video that you need to create is in regards to preventing falling off of a roof.

I’m starting my career as a chimney sweep on Monday and I wanted to say thank you for making these videos. I’m binge watching this series so that I can show up well-informed!

Burning a hot fire is so impossible for all these geniuses in America

Nobody ever explains, how a fire in the chimney and fireplace, cause the house to burn down. People just say, A chimney fire will burn your house down. 😱🔥

Dude…you really REALLY need a computer guy who understands that he should find clips of video, or at the least, pictures that display each part of your explanation. Having one picture of the finished flashing, then explaining each layer and part of the flashing based only on that finished picture is a piss poor way of breaking down the topic and having your great explanation shown in a visual manner that really breaks down each part of the flashing. The first video you made actually did a great job of breaking down each and every part and aspect in a 3d visual representation as well as the actual thing….your computer guy or girl is just simply getting extremely lazy based on this video and it is a sure fire way of having people NOT watch your videos…so if your trying to get views…fire whoever is doing your video/graphics..I would say editing but there was NOTHING TO EDIT. Just a single picture and you explaining away a fairly complex mechanism based on a single, finished picture.

lol…there’s all types of weird stuff going on in there? No…no…it is all explainable by science and physics sir. And it is not the temperature of the gas and smoke that would VAPORIZE the particles, only the temperature of the fire itself affects the gas and smoke and determines vaporization, if any. I think it would be best sir if you did not try and use your experience and heresay to try and fill in the gaps of the explanation and stick to reliable and valid facts from a scientific source because although your explaining things okay for someone who is watching this for simple passing knowledge in total lamens, for someone trying to make understand the science of what is happening, this won’t cut it. The short answer is that wood does not vaporize at the temperatures produced in a fireplace. It simply is no where near hot enough. If you burn wood hot and long enough, most of its constituents, primarily lignins and cellulose, will break down under the heat into more volatile particles; this process is called pyrolysis of wood. You are a very nice person though to your credit and even though that has absolutely nothing to do with what I am saying, I just wanted to let you know I appreciate the effort good sir. Keep trucking along!

lol it’s not “prefabicated”chimney….slow down a little when you speak and annunciate your words…it is PREFABRICATED…ya did the same thing when you gave your introduction containing your name which leads me to believe you said that super fast on purpose, precisely because you knew you had to say the word “prefabricated” and speaking fast in the few sentences you said before having to use the word gave you the out you needed to justify saying the following sentences - which contained the word you were so dreading - so fast that one could easily either miss your butchery of the word or chalk it up to you just speaking quickly but you and I know the truth, don’t we? It is okay you cannot say the word “prefabricate,” nor the many other words you routinely butcher in your other videos…I know I am giving you a super hard time for seemingly nothing but somebody has to call you out so you can improve. Your vocabulary and annunciations should match that spiffy jacket and top hat ya got on. But props on the great videos you make and the detail and depth you go into on the subject, much appreciated sir. I’m just kidding, you said the word again later perfectly and it is just obvious to me that any areas you stumble is only the result of you being nervous in front of the camera. Also, it is incredibly obvious that everything you said after your intro and…the word… was read off of a piece of paper or a computer or some prompt. Just saying…another area of Improvement perhaps, good sir. Now let me stfu. I got out what I absolutely had to say no matter what anyone in the world thinks or says about it because I just don’t give a F. Terrible video however…very bad….one or two pictures the entire video is a bad way to try and keep peoples’ attention spans.

Damn. That's probably what this cart is doing in my lungs

misleading title...should be called dont get damper unless its cat damper. wasted my time watching this.

And one other thing. Thats a pretty deep firebox. All the heats going up the flue. You are going to need a bigger chimney to accomodate that...... 2 firebrick deep or no 2 1/2 brick deep if you have a marble profile. That will give you a 3 and a half brick chimney on outside. And the walls need to be angled to relect heat into room.

Tight joints.... it does matter about joint thickness. With refactory mortar 1/8 to a 1/4 inch no more. I prefer 1/8. Refactory mortar I believe is good up to 2000°F. Regular cement about 700°. And you need to use tight joints and refactory cement between the flue liners as well, if its new build. It will take a long time to rot out. Tight joints in all burn areas. It will cost you well over $2000 to rebuild the firebox around here.

Can a wood stove be installed inside a Masonry fireplace?

I love your videos but id say please dont caulk your joints to repair them im restoring an old school where they did that and instead of fixing it it caused the bricks to retain moister behind the wall and blew out the rest of the joints if its more then one hole id avoid this method

I would never trust a guy who wears a suit that doesn’t fit him. 🫣

Use stone if you’re not going to run up a straight stack. Corbeling the brick in is what hacks do.

Hi! Thank you for this awesome video!! I had my Jotulle wood burning fireplace professionally cleaned in September 2023. I use it everyday. Today, I noticed black pieces of soot like pieces sitting outside on the snow. Is that creosote? Do I need my chimney cleaned again so soon? Also when the temperature lowers at the end of a burn how do you prevent creosote build up? Thank you so much for your wonderful video and information.

18" above grade? Mine sets about 1.5 inches above my back patio.

That man is correct.keep the chemny clean.

how do you air seal and insulate chimney in attic?

Thank you