Did you know that once the fire has started in the fireplace, the damper should be closed down as far as possible without causing smoke to back up into the room? This is done so that the chimney will exhaust all of the smoke that is created by the fire, but not a lot of the heat. With your damper wide open, both the heat and smoke are exhausted at about the same rate. Closing your damper down allows smoke to exhaust while more heat is retained in the fire box. A fireplace exhausts smoke in a syphon action. Once heat begins to rise, the syphon the heat has created can also remove air and moisture from the house. In other words, the warmest fire results when the damper is properly adjusted. Great resources on the Internet for fireplace and chimney information include: http://www.chimneys.com, http://www.hearth.com and http://www.hearth.com. And that's the On The House tip for today.