coal fires and smoky living rooms... what to do?

[fryalot]

Tis very windy today. Tis blowing a gale outside. This is blowing smoke from our fire into the living room, setting off the fire alarms and filling up our lungs with smoke.

If I open the windows and doors it makes it worse. Am unhappy about having smoke in the living room where the children are playing, but am even more unhappy about putting the fire out and not having any heating for the rest of the day.

Can't go out - no car today.

Anyone got any suggestions?

come to my house

oh that's so sweet.

But if you live in my village, you'll have the same problem and if you don't live in my village, tis too far to walk.

But thanks anyway

Not much good for today but have you got one of those things on the top of your chimmney - I think they are called cowls but they stop the birds getting down and the other advantage they have is to reduce the amount of wind that can blow down the chimmney. They aren't too expensive - about £50 I think. It helped us anyway - got terrible draughts down ours which are reduced now.

Has 'chimmney' got 2 m's or 1? Neither looks right!

chimney has one m

Not sure that a cowl would be worth the money tbh... this is the first time it has actually happened in this house and we've lived here nearly three years. It used to happen a lot in our last house though.

I think it is just because it is exceptionally windy today. It's not a regular problem.

Will mention it to dp though anyway, and see what he thinks.

thanks.

We had birds down the chimmney twice in 2.5 years in our old house which completely freaked out DS1 and he wouldn't go near the fireplace if he heard the birds sitting on up there. We got one in this house to avoid that again rather and so I didn't have to sit in front of the fireplace shouting 'go away birdies' everytime we heard something.

The wind was a secondary consideration really but it seems to have helped a bit.

It is actually quite still here today but we are 'down south'.

the weather forecast on the radio this morning said:

"windy in the north, mild in the south" and I thought 'is that IT?'

Ah, but at least they can say they got it right!

It wasn't that mild first thing - had a thin film of ice on the car when I walked DS1 to school. I think it has gone now though - it is a nice day for a change!

I think if it wasn't so windy, it would be quite nice here as well, I can see blue sky and the sun is shining.

But there are leaves and placcy bags and stuff flying all over the place

is there a vent squonk? i'd open it up and let it blast for about 10 minutes then close it to get rid of the smoke. it should just flame then. to stop ours belching smoke dh insist that keeping the doors closed in the room helps too as it is various draughts that make the smoke drift into the room.

never thought about that... yes there is one.

I'll give it a try, thanks very much