Our Fireplace Filled the Living Room With Smoke Until I Checked One Thing

The Question He Asked

“When’s the last time you opened your damper?” Tom asked.

I stood there blinking at him. I didn’t even know what a damper was, and I’d been using this fireplace for two years.

Turns out it’s a metal plate inside your chimney, usually cast iron or steel, that opens and closes like a trapdoor. When it’s open, smoke goes up and out the way it’s supposed to. When it’s closed, your chimney is sealed shut and all that smoke has exactly one place to go: back into your living room.

And ours, apparently, was closed.

Tom explained that most dampers have a handle or lever, usually mounted right inside the fireplace opening or tucked up in the throat of the chimney just above the firebox. You’re supposed to open it before you light a fire and close it afterward to keep cold air from pouring down the flue in winter. Some handles push forward or pull back. Others twist or lift. But they all do the same thing: they move that metal plate out of the way so smoke can escape.

I honestly had no memory of ever touching one. My best guess? The previous owner left it open when we moved in two years ago, and I’d just been lucky this whole time. I’d been lighting fires with the damper already in the right position, never realizing there was a mechanism I was supposed to be operating.

Until I wasn’t lucky anymore.

Tom handed me his flashlight and told me to crouch down in front of the fireplace and look up into the throat, right above where the flames usually sit. That’s where I’d find the lever, he said. And that’s where I’d see whether it was open or closed.

I got down on my knees, stuck my head into the firebox—which still smelled like wet ash and panic—and aimed the light up.

What I found explained everything. And it was so simple I wanted to kick myself.