Troubleshooting a Gas Fireplace

Video Transcript

"Hi, I'm Tim Gipson. I'm going to talk to you about how to troubleshoot a gas fireplace. Now, typically, once your gas logs are installed, the typical problems you'll have is you may occasionally, with a vented gas fireplace, you may get some odors that you experience. And what's involved there is you're not getting the proper ventilation to the...to the outside of the chimney when that happens. Now, there's a couple things that can cause that. The first is you have a damper that is closed, and it helps to keep any heat that's in your house going up the chimney. So the first thing you want to check if you...if you smell some fumes from your gas logs is you want to make sure to look up in here. And you can either use your lighter or a flashlight and look up there, but if you see that your damper is closed, then you want to make sure that damper is open. Now, most gas logs like this will have a damper that is either fully open or fully closed position. Now, if you are still...if you check to make sure that your damper is open and you're still smelling some fumes or you can come over here and you feel that actually you can feel air movement coming into the room, that means that your chimney is not drafting properly. And the most likely cause for that is you've gotten some creosote build-up in your flue. So at that point, you want to contact a licensed and bonded chimney sweep -- professional chimney sweep -- to come in and they can...using their equipment, they can clean out that flue and clean out the creosote. And then they will check everything out, light it up, and make sure that it is working properly. But typically, when you come into problems like that, that is the most typical problem you find is that you've got some fumes coming in. And, you know, cleaning your chimney is something that you should do at least once a year before you get into the heating system. The only other things is if you don't have an even flame where your connections are or if you've got a flame that is coming off to the side here, that could be potentially a dangerous thing. And you want to make sure that these fittings are tight. And to do that, you can take some soapy water, turn on your gas, and put it over this fitting and see if you get any bubbling. If you get any bubbling, then you might want to...then you want to tighten that. But essentially, when you turn your gas on and light it, it should light fairly readily and you should get a nice, even flame. And again, you should not feel any air movement out into the room. And that indicates that you've got...that your chimney is drafting properly. So I'm Tim Gipson with some basic tips on how to troubleshoot your gas fireplace."