When the fire is burning, the fireplace puts out very nice heat. But when the fire is not burning, having an open fireplace damper is like having an open window. Your furnace creates heat, and much of it goes through the fireplace and up the chimney.
The easy solution is to close the damper when the fireplace is not being used. However, due to the heat of fires, the metal of the damper sometimes warps over time. When that happens, it can never be fully sealed.
There is however an interesting product on the market called a Chimney Balloon which can be used to fully seal your chimney.
It's basically a very large and thick plastic bag and a very long plastic fill tube. Using the fill tube as a handle, your shove the plastic bag up into your chimney, then you inflate it. Once inflated you close the valve on the end of the fill tube. Your chimney is fully sealed and the fill tube hangs down into the fireplace area so you can see it and know the balloon is still up there.
To remove, simply open the valve on the fill tube, wait a few seconds while it deflates, and pull it down.
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