Chimney sweep logs - do they work?

[MikeJhn]

@profchris Absolutely, insurance companies can not cancel your insurance unless fraud is apparent either on the claim or on the application for the insurance, they may well reduce the amount of a claim due to contributory negligence, but can not refuse to payout if your claim is legitimate, I worked on many cases with the Insurance Ombudsman and claimants and it just does not happen.

 

[D_W]

Like this?View attachment 120604

not quite, though that doesn't look great. Think wood trim to the left and right of the fireplace, and where there's any gap at all between the trim and plaster, little puffs of smoking coming out. this is more like 3 feet left and 3 feet right of the edges of the firebox. The house is stone, so I guess the smoke was traveling through a breached flue into the walls.

After the fire, the entire chimney (about 30 feet tall and around 8 feet wide at the base and 3 feet deep was torn down by a mason and completely rebuilt...complete with stainless liner instead of terra cotta - that was the end of that - lots of enjoyment of fires after that (but no real accumulation in the chimney since they were all open fires with a ton of stack heat).