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Spent 4 hours chasing a draft that turned out to be a 2 inch gap behind the flue cap
Got called out to a house in Rochester last Tuesday because the homeowner swore smoke was coming back into the living room every time she lit a fire. I checked the damper, ran a camera through the flue, cleaned the whole run, and even tested the draft with a smoke pencil at the firebox. Turned out the cap on the roof had pulled away from the flue tile by about 2 inches, letting air swirl back down on windy days. Took me 4 hours to find something I fixed with a $9 tube of high temp sealant in 5 minutes. Anyone else got a trick for spotting a bad cap gap from the ground before you haul your ladder up?
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pat_hart3d ago
A cheap pair of binoculars from the ground will show you if the cap sits flush on all four sides of the flue tile. If you see a sliver of daylight between the cap and the tile, or the cap looks tilted, that gap is your problem without ever touching the ladder. Also check the cap right after a windy day, since a loose cap will shift and the gap will look worse than it did on a calm morning.
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