cowl to help control up draught

andyone

has anybody got one of these fitted...... the cowl sits on top on the chimney and is spring loaded and a chain runs from it down the chimney... and is attached at the fire side to allow control of the opening of the cowl....

more to the point has anyone got one in there house and how do they find it......
at the moment its impossible to keep the heat in my sitting room as it all races up the chimney... and also burns my fuel at a fast rate..

any input would be gratefull

woody1

yep i have one.. works to a degree too.. bear in mind that there is huge tension on the spring at the chimney so make sure to fix the hook for the chain solidly..i didnt initially ..and it pretty much pulled it clean out..can also be fidly to close because of the tension too, but yeah it does work, it probably wont cut down fuel use too drastically..i got mine to be able to close it altogether to cut out heat loss from the house and noise from the wind..

antiskeptic

andyone wrote: »

at the moment its impossible to keep the heat in my sitting room as it all races up the chimney... and also burns my fuel at a fast rate..

There's a few basic steps you can take to improve things:

The fire is burning fast because air is being drawn through the grate on which the fuel rests at too fast a rate. Have you got a properly fitting grate-front to enable you to block off the air flow heading to the underside of the grate? If it's ill fitting (or non-existant) then you can't throttle back the flow of air enough and you're effectively foot to the floor in the burning stakes.

"Slack" is an essential part of an efficient open fire (especially when burning smokeless). If you've not seen it before, its essentially a mix of pea sized pieces of coal and coal dust. Ideally, you mix a bit of water into a bucket of slack to form a paste and apply layer of it to the top of your fire to act as a sealing cap. This slows down the rate of burning to a more efficient level: the fuel glows red towards the front with some flames ... and you extract max heat/time from the coal. Properly done, you can light a full fire at 5pm and it's run all the way through til midnight without adding any more coal.

I'm not sure if you can buy slack in your area but you can certainly burn it . If I've no slack, I'll fold up a whole newspaper, soak it for a half hour in water then lay it over the top of the fire before it's blazing too much. It keeps a dampner on it for a while.

Fast burning draws draughts in from all quarters so slowing things down will help there. If your chimney is against an outside wall or you've a void under the floor boards then adding a wall/floor vent near the fire will cause the fire to draw the air it needs from outside the building rather than sucking up the nice warm air you've got in your house. Makes a huge difference this one.

In any case, I'd get things resolved. Burning blazing hot fires like that isn't good for your fireplace or chimney. A well slackened fire on the otherhand will give roasting heat out to the room whilst you can hold your hand over it without feeling any heat going up.

any input would be gratefull

Hopefully this input will keep your grate full

andyone

antiskeptic wrote: »

Hopefully this input will keep your grate full

thank you very much..plenty of info

reilig

andyone wrote: »

has anybody got one of these fitted...... the cowl sits on top on the chimney and is spring loaded and a chain runs from it down the chimney... and is attached at the fire side to allow control of the opening of the cowl....

more to the point has anyone got one in there house and how do they find it......
at the moment its impossible to keep the heat in my sitting room as it all races up the chimney... and also burns my fuel at a fast rate..

any input would be gratefull

We built our house on an exposed sight. Its windy there 300 days a year. For the first month we had a lot of problems with both our stove in our sitting room and our stanley errigal range in the kitchen. Neither were putting out much heat. You could heat the wind sucking up both chimneys. Fuel was buring up really fast in them.

Solved the problem with an aerocowel

http://www.aerocowl.com/

It was relatively cheap at €100 and easy to install. Has solved the problem for us anyway!!

jimpchannel

Re Chimney Control Cowl ,

With the chain locked at max. there is no draught upwards or downwards,
which is the purpose intended to conserve central heating energy costs.
But the noise element in the current exceptionally high winds, ( Nov.2015),
from the cowl, is annoyingly loud and distracting. Is there any solution to
this problem ? Help !

JimP

turis

jimpchannel wrote: »

Re Chimney Control Cowl ,

With the chain locked at max. there is no draught upwards or downwards,
which is the purpose intended to conserve central heating energy costs.
But the noise element in the current exceptionally high winds, ( Nov.2015),
from the cowl, is annoyingly loud and distracting. Is there any solution to
this problem ? Help !

JimP

I'm considering installing one of these, has anyone found a better solution for the noise as well? I've got asked €650 sourced and fitted on my 3 storey house (the thing itself it's about €150) so I wanted to be sure before spending money on something that may not solve the problem. My bedroom is below the attic and I'm sleeping just near the chimney flue, it can get very noisy at night. I'd appreciate other recommendations as well.

recedite

andyone wrote: »

has anybody got one of these fitted...... the cowl sits on top on the chimney and is spring loaded and a chain runs from it down the chimney... and is attached at the fire side to allow control of the opening of the cowl....

more to the point has anyone got one in there house and how do they find it......
at the moment its impossible to keep the heat in my sitting room as it all races up the chimney... and also burns my fuel at a fast rate..
any input would be gratefull

Just to warn you that it is unsafe to restrict the top of the chimney while the fire is lit, because you could end up with carbon monoxide in the room.
These gadgets are for closing off the chimney when it is not in use.


A better but more expensive job is to install a stove. Closes the chimney when not in use, and burns fuel more efficiently when it is in use.
The key thing about the air intake restricter on a stove is that it is located at the bottom of the chimney, not the top, so there is a kind of suction created inside the chimney.