Cold air bottom of Fireplace

Since this past night was really the first cold air that we have had in awhile, we flet a significant amount of cold air/breeze coming in from the bottom of the fireplace. You could feel it from the bottom of the hearth since the hearth does not meet the floor. Our basement is not finished but this air was colder than the air in the house including that in the basement. any thougths on where this might be coming from and how to resolve this issue. I went downstairs in the basement but I didn't see anything that told me where the air was coming in from. Could this be a bad fireplace install? Any thoughts or ideas would be helpful.

 

Is your fireplace on an inside wall or outside wall? Typically the contractor who installs the fireplace does not add insulation on the outside wall. I've seen this many times. If this is fairly new construction ask your builder to return and insulate. Secondly, the cold air may be passing through your duct work from the outside. If you can adjust the flow of heat through the duct work then close the lever.

 

KTdid,

The fireplace is on the outside wall. Unfortunately this is not a new house and as such we will need to fix this problem ourselves. We don't really use the fireplace much since it's not cost effective, would closing the outside vent help?

I was thinking about looking outside this weekend under the "bump out" where the fireplace is and removing the wood from the bottom of the "bump out" to see if I can locate the flow of air or if there was any insulation. I don't want to make a mistake with insulation by a firepalce but I want the cold air to stop flowing in the family room.

 

If you don't use the fireplace and the gas line is completely turned off then I would get back into the bumpout and insulate and close off the vent (do not seal it off because as long as you have an active gas line connected to the fireplace it may be against code to do so. But you could cap it off. Good luck.

 

We had to do the exact same thing. We had so much cold air blowing into our family room from the bottom of the fireplace that we had to blow out the pilot light and cover up the vent outside with a tarp. Unfortunately, this meant that we couldn't use our fireplace but it stopped the draft. Good luck!

 

humm, on a semi-side note... I have a 42" LCD TV hanging in the corner over our gas fireplace and need to pull some wires and install an electrical outlet to the TV ... it just occurred to me that pulling the fireplace out temporarily might be the best way to get access to behind there to wire things up.... has anyone ever taken one of these fireplaces out for such a thing?

 

If we open up the panel on the bottom of our gas fireplace, we can feel a draft coming in from around the gas line and the electric outlet that’s in there. If the wind is blowing towards that side of the house, the draft is noticeably increased.

Figuring out a way to insulate it is on our growing list of small jobs that we’ll get around to taking care of “someday”.

In the meantime, a door draft guard placed along the bottom of the fireplace, when not in use, does wonders.

Or maybe something like this: http://cwalker169.home.comcast.net/index.htm