Care and Maintenance for Your New Fireplace Installation | Ramsey, NJ

A new fireplace in Ramsey can be a great addition to your home all year long, but it is important that you understand how to care for it in order to keep it in working condition. Properly caring for a wood-burning fireplace can also keep your family safe. Fortunately, maintaining your new fireplace is a relatively simple job. Read on for the details about care and maintenance for your new fireplace installation.

Knowing What to Burn

There are a few different types of fireplaces to choose from, and they create fire using different materials. Your prototypical picture of a fireplace may involve pieces of lumber heating the hearth, or you might think of a fireplace fueled by natural gas. If you want to keep your fireplace working properly for years to come, it is important to know exactly what to burn inside of it. Haphazardly going to your backyard to break sticks off of a tree is not necessarily the best idea, even for a wood-burning fireplace. Instead, you should burn wood that you have chopped and kept covered for several months; this type of wood will contain a smaller amount of moisture and produce less creosote, which is a potentially harmful substance. It is also preferable to burn hardwoods over softwoods.

What You Can Do

If you have been burning the proper materials within your fireplace, the next step is to provide some light but routine maintenance on your New Fireplace own. If you notice ash piled up to the bottom of your grate, clean it up. Consider light small pieces of wood to ensure that your chimney is working properly. If this test results in smoke filling the room, you should have your chimney looked at.

When to Call a Professional

While there is only so much an average homeowner can do for the family fireplace, one of the most important things is to work with a professional. You should have a professional come to your home to clean and inspect your chimney on an annual basis. Fireplace professionals can make sure that your unit remains in proper working order.