Open Fire - Hole in Upstairs Room?

anotheruser

Right, let's fully explain here...

We use the fire downstairs in winter.

There was a heavy smell of soot and fireplace smells, hence thinking after clearing it out a little, I could use something that would allow air to circulate but not push a smokey soot smell into the room. I've used socks stuffed with stuff before - hang them in a wardrobe and the smell will leech out and make clothes smell nice. Hence my thinking it could work with this too.

Yes, I've bought a new monoxide detector.
The smoke alarm on the landing outside the room has one built in, never gone off.

Put the dedicated detector in the living room, with the fire on, it reads 0.
Put it in the upstairs room right next to the vent area for an hour or two and it beeped warning me it had detected 77ppm.
Problem is, I don't know if that is because I cleared out a bit of the soot and rubbish or whether it was doing it before. I'd find it hard to think any air circulated that well - we'd only get a smokey smell rarely.

Have opened the window for 15 mins or so and reset the detector.
It's been back in the room but on a ladder slightly below head height for about 10 mins and currently reads 0 but the fire downstairs has died down a little now. Will be leaving it for the evening.

Yes, I know the answer is to "get an engineer in" but this post is about education, not just a "look elsewhere" straight away.


Not sure on the theory of a fireplace upstairs.
There would be no where for it to go really. Here's a photo of the room:



The fireplace downstairs is perhaps 60cm deep, but there wouldn't be space for this upstairs, although the whole chimney breast is about 60cm deep. The house was built around 1930/1940. No other room has evidence of fireplaces.

FreeBear

anotheruser wrote: »

Put the dedicated detector in the living room, with the fire on, it reads 0.
Put it in the upstairs room right next to the vent area for an hour or two and it beeped warning me it had detected 77ppm.

One of two things could be happening here.

1. Fumes from the fire in the living room are exiting the chimney pot as they should, but are then being blown back down the pot leading to the (old) fire place in the upstairs room.
2. The withes (or mid-feathers) have failed and are allowing fumes to pass from one flue to another.

For the first case, fitting an extension and/or cowl in conjunction with capping off the unused chimney pot would fix most of the problems.
The second case, the flue will need to be relined or the location of the failed withe identified and repaired.

To find out which of the two problems you have will require the services of either a HETAS engineer or a chimney sweep. If they smoke test the flue, the chimney pot will need to be temporarily capped. Alternatively, a camera inspection may be able to locate where the problem is.

JohnB47

anotheruser wrote: »

The fireplace downstairs is perhaps 60cm deep, but there wouldn't be space for this upstairs, although the whole chimney breast is about 60cm deep. The house was built around 1930/1940. No other room has evidence of fireplaces.

Just on this point - I have lived/stayed in a few very old houses which had really tiny cast iron fire grates set into shallow chimney breasts - sometimes in a corner.

So I could see how there might have been one in that projecting area.

Oh and that doorway and maybe the wall it's placed on, probably wasn't there in the original build, so a fireplace there would look quite natural, whereas today it wouldn't.