A. The first thing to do is have your chimney and fireplace cleaned if you haven’t had this done in a while. If you have recently had a cleaning, there could be some underlying problems causing the smell. These include negative air issues: making sure your damper is closed, lack of a raincap at the top of your chimney, moisture problems within the chimney, your smoke chamber may have corbelled brick (which allows creosote to build up), or your chimney could be too short which doesn’t allow enough draft to draw smoke and odors up and out.