22 Oct Upside-Down Fires: The Key to Long Lasting Warmth and a Clean Chimney

As cooler weather continues to come in small bursts, you might want to have a relaxed evening watching the fire and enjoying the sizzling and crackling music it has to offer. However, house fires from dirty chimneys happen every year from this simple pleasure and a professional chimney cleaning is sure to keep any danger of this from happening, but one method you should use to prevent house-fires and keep your chimney clean is building an upside-down fire.

The term upside-down fire sounds a little crazy, but it’s actually a method to build a strong burning fire that offers more heat and helps keep your chimney clean. Creosote build-up happens from fire smoke and hot debris that doesn’t make it all the way out of your chimney. Usually this happens because of cool spots in the inner walls that keep floating debris and smoke from exiting out the chimney. Therefore, making sure that your entire chimney is heated up before burning a fire can greatly reduce the build-up of creosote. By using an upside-down fire, you heat up the inner walls before the larger pieces of wood start burning.

How To Build an Upside-Down Fire

If you have ever taken a class or been taught the art of building a fire, you probably used the teepee method. You start with a foundation of kindling: really small twigs, strips of paper, or a fire burning log. Then you add slightly larger pieces of wood stacked on top of the kindling, followed by the logs and slabs or the largest size you have. Thus you have constructed a teepee ready to blaze and smoke, but this method doesn’t always work as anyone who has ever tried this knows. The best method instead is to build a fire in the exact opposite order.

The Method

1. Stack the largest logs on the bottom of your fireplace. Stack them side by side so that there is no space between them
2. Then put the next layer of smaller logs on top, again ensuring that there is no space between them
3. Finally but your firestarter supplies on top: newspaper, chunks of fire starter logs, twigs soaked in oil, or whatever is your preference
4. Light the firestarter layer at the top and sit and wait!

The Benefits of an Upside Down Fire

Minimal Smoke: because your fire is starting off with firestarter pieces, the heat from those is going to heat up your chimney and, also, because there is no debris above the flame, less smoke is going to be made. Less smoke means a cleaner chimney.
More Heat:You will have to wait a little while before the flames start to get really big because the embers from the fire starters have to trickle down to the large pieces of wood (which is why you need to keep no space between the stacked logs). The fire at the top creates more airflow and ventilation by warming the flue before the fire get’s big so that once it does, you won’t have any warmth wasted.
No Ash!Since the fire starts from the top and burns everything until it gets down to the next layer, by the end of the fire you won’t have any ash remains.
Less ManagementNo more going outside to through more logs on the fire. This method means maximized efficiency for you wood and minimal work by you.

Call us for a professional cleaning before you light your first fire this winter and then use the upside-down fire method to keep your chimney clean and your house warm.