Cover Fireplace Temporarily

Oh, yes indeed.

We have an open fireplace in our living room and vast quantities of hot air vanish up it, if we allow it.

I made a board covered in carpet that blocks up our fireplace when not in use. It makes a huge difference.

Coal effects are never efficient:

Guess depends how well your family are provided for.

CO poisioning is going to be unpleasant for someone to have to discover....

Cheers Adam

OOPs having just read that the fire is of course out of use, couled you move it temporarirly and use a chimney balloon?

Cheers Adam

Blocking the flue doesn't sound clever in case someone in the future uses or tries to use the fire without realising it has been blocked .

Covering the complete fire sounds a better idea although not particularly attractive but I'm assuming you don't mind that .

Chimney ballon, either commercial or home made from a bin bag loosely stuffed with newspaper.

Firmly attach a brightly coloured ribbon or something obvious that hangs down over the "coals" to remind you that it's up there.

"Usenet Nutter" wrote

Whatever I do it will be clearly visible. Whether I can get away with this aesthetically is another matter!!

Phil

Copies of L'Equipe for example ? :-)

In article , TheScullster writes

The flue outlet on that model appears to be high up at the back, can you see it easily from the front looking up? If you can then you could cover the opening with tape for winter. I've done this on one of mine with some 2" wide pvc insulating tape. If it has a larger visible outlet you could create a mat of tape from multiple strips. Parcel tape would do but it will leave a residue when peeled off and smell when that is burnt off.

Thinish tape will melt and burn off if the fire is accidentally lit, highlighting the error from the smell (of burning plastic) and reopening the flue to reduce the CO hazard.

Some of the heat loss calculators allow around 1kW lost up an open flue.

You have to ventilate a flue top and bottom, so you can't completely block it. However, the methods you suggest probably wouldn't block it well enough to cause problems. Given there's still a gas fire, any blocking needs to be obvious and render the fire unusable.