Smoke smell in basement

[Hammylinky]

I recently moved to a new house and had my fireplace cleaned. After I lit the first fire in the fireplace I went down in the basement for something. As soon as I opened the door I noticed the smell of smoke, not overpowering but noticable. I traced the source to the wall where the fireplace is. It looks like the prior owners had a wood stove downstairs because there is a cutout in the foundation that fits the size of a pipe. There was a bunch of insulation jammed in there. I packed an old towel in the hole and lit another fire and the smell was extremely faint downstairs. My guess is the flue of the old wood stove downstairs was linked to the family room fireplace located directly above.

Also, I'm not sure if this is related, but the firebox in the upstairs fireplace has opening in the bottom where I can lift up a plate and sweep the ashes into a chute that collects them in the basement. I have not tried this so I'm not sure where the chute ends up.

My biggest concern is safety since I can smell smoke in the basement. Is this a safety problem? And we don't plan on getting a stove for the basement so how can I seal off the existing hole? Thanks for any help!

[vtm]

I have a somewhat similar situation. We have two flues inside the same chimney, one feeding a fireplace in the living room, another feeding a fireplace in the basement. A previous owner had a woodstove inset put into the basement fireplace. To install the woodstove, they had to remove the damper for the basement fireplace and the seal between the fireplace and woodstove is not completely air-tight.

We had the whole chimney system inspected before using it (we just moved in this summer). One of the things the inspector mentioned was that the tops of the flues are the same height (at the top of the chimney). He said had seen cases like this where smoke from one fireplace will rise up the flue, then fall or be pulled down the other flue, which could then enter the house.

In our case, since there is not an air-tight seal between the lower fireplace and the woodstove inset, some amount of smoke gets into the house.

The inspector mentioned a couple things. We could take the chimney cap off the flue, for the one we use most, which would help the smoke rise more quickly away from the other flue. Another alternative would be to offset the flues, extending one an additional 3" or more above the other.

I really want to keep the chimney caps on. But I haven't looked into ways to extend one of the flues or whether that would actually work. Maybe other folks know of a product out there. I was hoping to see a reply to your post that would give me ideas. And sorry I couldn't offer much help.