Position your stove on the hearth and plan your steel vitreous flue configuration. This may just be one piece of pipe or it may be more complicated. This is an inflatable plastic bag that is inserted into the chimney just high enough to be out of sight, then inflated. The chimney balloon has a small hole to allow ventilation but not large enough to lose much heat. If you ever decide to reuse the fireplace for a real fire, simply deflate the balloon and the chimney is open again. I never thought to ask the installer to do this because I was new to inserts at the time it was put in. (Though not new to wood heat in general, having grown up with a wood stove as our sole source of heat.) I would recommend that you first have the flue swept, then a capping cowl is fitted to the terminal/pot, which would allow the flue to breathe but prevent water ingress and birds from entering the flue.

A closure plate does not need an access hatch for sweeping as the chimney can be swept either via the stove or through a removable sweeping plate on the stove pipe. Before the closure plate design commences I usually connect my “adaptor” to the bottom of the chimney liner (adaptors can have differing lengths of nose and have two methods of attaching to the liner – bolts or self tappers). If using self tappers they will pass through the liner and both walls of the adaptor (choose a length so they only protrude a few mm into the inside surface of the adaptor). Better still buy our adaptor with captive wing nuts. A fireplace can lose energy: The chimney exhausts heat from the fireplace. This carries air from inside your home outward, causing your home to lose energy (heat and A/C). Drafts drive up the cost of cooling and heating in your home.

Fitting your liner into your chimney

Though of course, how much maintenance your setup requires depends on the type of fireplace you have.

Also I asked why he smashed out the complete housing and not just cut out an area big enough for the stove pipe to go up, then I would have at least had the rest of the damper housing and damper flap to close off a huge section of the hole. Note also extra inspection hatches also aid fitting and inspection (only possible on larger closure plates and no good if adding insulating beads, ( insulating a liner I do not advise as a rule). Fill deep holes in wall with spare mortar or use "bonding" (used before plastering to fill crevices and holes). We will look at these two scenarios separately but if you are a number 2 ;-), then I would still read the instructions aimed at the number 1’s as a lot if this is relevant. This is not always obvious from the ground, but could be a problem. Be sure to get a quote before any work is carried out.Before we go any further let’s first make sure we understand the difference between a closure plate and a register plate (both seal off the chimney from the room and are the ceiling above your recess). This plate must be made of a solid, non-combustible material. These are often referred to as a closure or register plate but there is a difference between the two. For example a dramatic code change occured in 2003 NFPA 211. The manuals with that stove, could be printed in 2001 and they will not update the manual till re-certification occures You will need to paint the surface of the inside walls of the recess and one side of the cement board with a PVA mix (3 water to 1 PVA). This is very important as without this stage the bond between wall and board may not be good.