Protecting a marble mantelpiece from smoke

[RogerS]

We're putting in a new marble fireplace and want to protect it from smoke. Seems to be a lot of conflicting information on t'web and so just wondered if anyone here had experience of the problem and what solutions were tried ?

TIA

 

[Jacob]

Don't light a fire near it?
Or if you do make sure it draws well. If you are getting smoke up the outside then you have a much more serious problem than just keeping it clean.

 

[Phil Pascoe]

We used to use this stuff on all our marble -
https://www.ebay.co.uk/i/123155365891?chn=ps

 

[RogerS]

We used to use this stuff on all our marble -
https://www.ebay.co.uk/i/123155365891?chn=ps

Was that a fireplace, Phil?

 

[Phil Pascoe]

No. Marble floors, mainly.

 

[Woody2Shoes]

The answer is probably:

a) Only burn dry, seasoned, hardwood;

b) Make sure that the hearth opening is smaller than a certain proportion of the cross-sectional area of the flue directly above - I forget the detail. This is covered by Building Regs but gets forgotten when people do work on fireplaces who end up with an opening too large for the existing flue and find the thing can't draw properly:
https://www.gov.uk/government/publicati ... document-j from about page 29 onwards.

Cheers, W2S

 

[RogerS]

Cheers, Woody, I hoping that the Georgians got it right !