Ack.

[lalicopa]

So I'm all into this fireplace thing. Totally loving it. And of course, tonight I lit a great fire. We headed up to bed and it was just smoldering a little bit, but no real flames anymore. I asked Robert if he closed the flue - he said no, so I closed it. Mind you, I've never made a fire before yesterday...it's just become really cold here and I never had a fireplace until we moved into this house.

Needless to say, within 10 minutes, the entire house STANK of smoke. There wasn't actually smoke, but the house was getting all the smell as if there were. It's been over an hour and it still smells like this. My head is pounding. I opened the flue...will never make that mistake again. Thankfully this was only 10 minutes after we came upstairs and it wasn't longer...I think if this went longer that we'd never get the smell out of here!

I'm a moron.

Comments

[preternatural.livejournal.com]

We just leave the flue open throughout fireplace season...

[lalicopa.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I think that's what we're going to do. The guy who cleaned the fireplace on Monday told me to close it because it lets out heat and lets in cold air...but I'll wait and see if that happens.

It's 12 freakin' hours later and it STILL stinks in here.

[preternatural.livejournal.com]

Well, the cold air is more of an issue than the warm air, IME - due to the design of the chimney, cold downdrafts might happen when it's windy, but not much of the warm house air drifts sideways through the fireplace to go up. YMMV, of course!