Protecting a marble mantelpiece from smoke

RogerS · 5 Oct 2018

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 · 5 Oct 2018

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 · 5 Oct 2018

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

RogerS · 5 Oct 2018

phil.p":v0ezewcu said:
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 · 5 Oct 2018

No. Marble floors, mainly.

Woody2Shoes · 10 Oct 2018

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