When you have a wood fireplace or stove, there is a draft of hot air which
goes up the chimney. This creates a "vacuum" inside the house.

There needs to be air coming into the house to supply the draft air for the
fireplace. If all of your windows are closed, the only way for air to enter
your house would be via the chimney in the basement!

So I think the basement chimney is sucking in air and it is also sucking in
smoke from your rooftop area.

The solution would be to crack a window near your fireplace.


wrote in message
We have a home that has a gas firplace in the basement and a wood
burning fireplace on the upper floor. When we start a fire in the
upper fp we smell smoke downstairs. There's no damper on the gas one
downstairs. The gas one has a pipe that goes up the brick work to the
outside. We noticed this smell got worse after we installed a chimney
cap for the wood fp. So does some of the smoke go down the pipe of our
basement gas fp? If that's the case what can we do to prevent this?

Thanks
JaKe
Seattle