How does a chimney cap help to prevent fire?
Let’s imagine you are spending a nice Atlanta Saturday afternoon with your family. You decide to go the mall, do some shopping. Then maybe everyone goes to a nice pizza restaurant, like maybe California Pizza Kitchen. By the way, if you are there, be sure to get the key lime pie. It is totally amazing. I used to have it when I was a child in the 60’s when we would vacation in the Florida Keys. It was the real key lime pie made with real key limes.
Anyway, after your long day, you come home and decide to light a fire in the fireplace. The bricks and flue are very cold from the outside air temperature. When you light the fire, be sure to start the fire small to let the chimney stack warm up. But anyway, once you light the fire you get it nice and big and hot.
Unfortunately for you, the creosote has been in the chimney a little too long. It has pyrolized. That is a word that means the molecular structure has changed over time so that it is much more flammable at a much lower temperature than when it was fresh. In fact it can get to be so flammable it will light at around the temperature of boiling water. That is pretty scary for an Atlanta fireplace user.
So the next thing you know there is a chimney fire roaring away in your chimney flue. There are several things you can do to help put out the fire, but here’s the part we are interested in. Up at the top of your chimney, do you have a chimney cover? These are highly recommended in Atlanta just for the weather we have here. Our weather is extreme enough to do a lot of damage to chimneys not even taking into account chimney fires.
If you have a chimney cap or chimney lid on the top of the chimney, you have a far better chance of not having the chimney fire spread to the house. Why? Because a SCREENED chimney cover will keep sparks inside the cap area and not let them spew over your house like a mini volcano. Those sparks can light the roof on fire, or even leaves in the yard if you have enough.
So get your chimney cap installation today and have at least that peace of mind.
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