Chimney in the context of Smoke

A hearth (/hɑːrθ/) is the place in a home where a fire is or was traditionally kept for home heating and for cooking, usually constituted by a horizontal hearthstone and often enclosed to varying degrees by any combination of reredos (a low, partial wall behind a hearth), fireplace, oven, smoke hood, or chimney. Hearths are usually composed of masonry such as brick or stone. For millennia, the hearth was such an integral part of a home, usually its central and most important feature, that the concept has been generalized to refer to a homeplace or household, as in the terms "hearth and home" and "keep the home fires burning". In the modern era, since the advent of central heating, hearths are usually less central to most people's daily life because the heating of the home is instead done by a furnace or a heating stove, and cooking is instead done with a kitchen stove/range (combination cooktop and oven) alongside other home appliances; thus many homes built in the 20th and 21st centuries do not have hearths. Nonetheless, many homes still have hearths, which still help serve the purposes of warmth, cooking, and comfort.

Before the industrial era, a common design was to place a hearth in the middle of the room as an open hearth, with the smoke rising through the room to a smoke hole in the roof. In later designs which usually had a more solid and continuous roof, the hearth was instead placed to the side of the room and provided with a chimney.

A portable engine is an engine, either a steam engine or an internal combustion engine, that sits in one place while operating (providing power to machinery), but (unlike a stationary engine) is portable and thus can be easily moved from one work site to another. Mounted on wheels or skids, it is either towed to the work site or moves there via self-propulsion.

Portable engines were in common use in industrialised countries from the early 19th through early 20th centuries, during an era when mechanical power transmission was widespread. Before that, most power generation and transmission were by animal, water, wind, or human; after that, a combination of electrification (including rural electrification) and modern vehicles and equipment (such as tractors, trucks, cars, engine-generators, and machines with their engines built in) displaced most use of portable engines. In developing countries today, portable engines still have some use (typically in the form of modern small engines mounted on boards), although the technologies mentioned above increasingly limit their demand there as well. In industrialised countries they are no longer used for commercial purposes, but preserved examples can often be seen at steam fairs driving appropriate equipment for demonstration purposes.

A saltbox house is a gable-roofed residential structure that is typically two stories in the front and one in the rear. It is a traditional New England style of home, originally timber framed, which takes its name from its resemblance to a wooden lidded box in which salt was once kept.

The structure's unequal sides and long, low rear roofline are its most distinctive features. A flat front and central chimney are also recognizable traits.

A fireplace or hearth is a structure made of brick, stone or metal designed to contain a fire. Fireplaces are used for the relaxing ambiance they create and for heating a room. Modern fireplaces vary in heat efficiency, depending on the design.

Historically, they were used for heating a dwelling, cooking, and heating water for laundry and domestic uses. A fire is contained in a firebox or fire pit; a chimney or other flue allows exhaust gas to escape. A fireplace may have the following: a foundation, a hearth, a firebox, a mantel, a chimney crane (used in kitchen and laundry fireplaces), a grate, a lintel, a lintel bar, an overmantel, a damper, a smoke chamber, a throat, a flue, and a chimney filter or afterburner.

A smoke hole (smokehole, smoke-hole) is a hole in a roof for the smoke from a fire to vent. Before the invention of the smoke hood or chimney, many dwellings had smoke holes to allow the smoke from the hearth to escape. Pre-modern English homes with unglazed windows or thatch roofs required no special vent for smoke. These structures typically had only one story for living spaces, and inhabitants made do with a band of relatively clear air near the ground.

Centring, centre, centering, or center is a type of falsework: the temporary structure upon which the stones of an arch or vault are laid during construction. Until the keystone is inserted an arch has no strength and needs the centring to keep the voussoirs in their correct relative positions. A simple centring without a truss is called a common centring. A cross piece connecting centring frames is called a lag or bolst.

Centring is normally made of wood timbers, a relatively straightforward structure in a simple arch or vault; but with more complex shapes involving double curvature, such as a dome or the bottle-shaped flue in a Norman-period kitchen, clay or sand bound by a weak lime mortar would be used. Shaping could be done by eye, perhaps with the help of a template, then stones or bricks laid against it. On larger works like a 19th-century pottery kiln this was impractical. The structure would be built round a post acting as a datum, and each course of stonework would be set at a distance from the datum.

A structure relocation is the process of moving a structure from one location to another. There are two main ways for a structure to be moved: disassembling and then reassembling it at the required destination, or transporting it whole. For the latter, the building is first raised and then may be pushed on temporary rails or dollies if the distance is short. Otherwise, wheels, such as flatbed trucks, are used. These moves can be complicated and require the removal of protruding parts of the building, such as the chimney, as well as obstacles along the journey, such as overhead cables and trees.

Reasons for moving a building range from commercial reasons such as scenery to preserving an important or historic building. Moves may also be made simply at the whim of the owner, or to separate a building from the plot of land on which it stands.

A damper is a valve or plate that stops or regulates the flow of air inside a duct, chimney, VAV box, air handler, or other air-handling equipment. A damper may be used to cut off central air conditioning (heating or cooling) to an unused room, or to regulate it for room-by-room temperature and climate control - for example, in the case of Volume Control Dampers. Its operation can be manual or automatic. Manual dampers are turned by a handle on the outside of a duct. Automatic dampers are used to regulate airflow constantly and are operated by electric or pneumatic motors, in turn controlled by a thermostat or building automation system. Automatic or motorized dampers may also be controlled by a solenoid, and the degree of air-flow calibrated, perhaps according to signals from the thermostat going to the actuator of the damper in order to modulate the flow of air-conditioned air in order to effect climate control.

In a chimney flue, a damper closes off the flue to keep the weather and animals (e.g. birds) out and warm or cool air in. This is usually done in the summer, but also may be done in the winter between uses. In some cases, the damper may also be partly closed to help control the rate of combustion. The damper may be accessible only by reaching up into the fireplace by hand or with a woodpoker, or sometimes by a lever or knob that sticks down or out. On a wood-burning stove or similar device, it is usually a handle on the vent duct as in an air conditioning system. Forgetting to open a damper before beginning a fire can cause serious smoke damage to the interior of a home, if not a house fire.

Tokyo is the most populated of Japan's 47 prefectures. Mainland Tokyo is divided into two sections: Western Tokyo and the special wards of Tokyo. The prefecture's tallest structures are within the 23 special wards, which comprise the area formerly incorporated as Tokyo City. As of May 2025, there are over 200 structures in Tokyo that stand at least 150 metres (490 ft) tall, of which 49 are at least 200 metres (660 ft) tall, including those that are still under construction but have been topped out. Most of these structures are buildings; however, there are other types of structures among the tallest in the prefecture, such as freestanding towers and incineration smokestacks.

The tallest structure in the prefecture is Tokyo Skytree, a megatall lattice tower that rises 634 metres (2,080 feet), which was completed in 2012. It also stands as the tallest structure in Japan, the tallest tower in the world, and the third-tallest freestanding structure in the world. The second-tallest structure in Tokyo is the 333-metre-tall (1,093-foot) Tokyo Tower, a lattice tower completed in 1958. The tallest building and third-tallest overall structure is the 325-metre-tall (1,066-foot) Azabudai Hills Mori JP Tower, completed in 2023 and being Tokyo's only supertall skyscraper. It is also the tallest building in Japan and the world's largest skyscraper by floor area. The second-tallest building and fourth-tallest structure is the 284-metre-tall (932-foot) Nihonbashi 1-Chōme Central District Redevelopment (tentative name), which is topped out and scheduled for completion in 2026. Including topped-out buildings, Tokyo is home to 17 of the 25 tallest freestanding structures and 18 of the 25 tallest buildings in Japan.

In the controlled demolition industry, building implosion is the strategic placing of explosive material and timing of its detonation so that a structure collapses on itself in a matter of seconds, minimizing the physical damage to its immediate surroundings. Despite its terminology, building implosion also includes the controlled demolition of other structures, like bridges, smokestacks, towers, and tunnels. This is typically done to save time and money of what would otherwise be an extensive demolition process with construction equipment, as well as to reduce construction workers' exposure to infrastructure that is in severe disrepair.

Building implosion, which reduces to seconds a process which could take months or years to achieve by other methods, typically occurs in urban areas and often involves large landmark structures.

Kelly Kettle, Storm Kettle, Ghillie Kettle, Thermette, Survival Kettle and Volcano Kettle are trade names for portable devices for boiling water outdoors using twigs and other small combustible materials; these devices consist of a water jacket surrounding a fire chamber which creates an upward chimney draft ensuring efficient and rapid boiling even in windy or wet weather.

Kelly Kettle and Volcano Kettle are registered trademarks of the Kelly Kettle company which first produced the product in Ireland in the early 1900s. George Marris & Co of Birmingham first produced the "Sirram Volcano Kettle" in England in the 1920s. The Thermette was first manufactured in New Zealand in 1929 and was standard issue for the New Zealand Army during World War II where it was known as a Benghazi boiler or Benghazi burner. Other companies, including the Eydon Kettle Company started manufacture at later dates.

The stack effect or chimney effect is the movement of air into and out of buildings through unsealed openings, chimneys, flue-gas stacks, or other purposefully designed openings or containers, resulting from air buoyancy. Buoyancy occurs due to a difference in indoor-to-outdoor air density resulting from temperature and moisture differences. The result is either a positive or negative buoyancy force. The greater the thermal difference and the height of the structure, the greater the buoyancy force, and thus the stack effect. The stack effect can be useful to drive natural ventilation in certain climates, but in other circumstances may be a cause of unwanted air infiltration or fire hazard.

A flue is a pipe, or opening in a chimney for conveying exhaust gases from a fireplace, furnace, water heater, boiler, or generator to the outdoors. Historically the term flue meant the chimney itself. In the United States, they are also known as vents for boilers and as breeching for water heaters and modern furnaces. They usually operate by buoyancy, also known as the stack effect, or the combustion products may be "induced" via a blower. As combustion products contain carbon monoxide and other dangerous compounds, proper "draft", and admission of replacement air is imperative. Building codes, and other standards, regulate their materials, design, and installation.

A funnel is the smokestack or chimney on a ship used to expel boiler steam and smoke or engine exhaust. They are also commonly referred to as stacks.

A chimney fire is the combustion (burning) of residue deposits referred to as soot or creosote, on the inner surfaces of chimney tiles, flue liners, stove pipes, etc.

Industrial exhaust ducts are pipe systems that connect hoods to industrial chimneys through other components of exhaust systems like fans, collectors, etc. Ducts are low-pressure pneumatic conveyors to convey dust, particles, shavings, fumes, or chemical hazardous components from air in the vicinity to a shop floor or any other specific locations like tanks, sanding machines, or laboratory hoods. Ducts can be fabricated from a variety of materials including carbon steel, stainless steel, PVC, and fiberglass. They can be fabricated through rolling (preferable for ducts of 12" or more in diameter) or extruded (for ducts up to 18").

HVAC systems do not include this category of industrial application, namely exhaust systems. A distinction from HVAC system ducts is that the fluid (air) conveyed through the duct system may not be homogeneous. An industrial exhaust duct system is primarily a pneumatic conveying system and is basically governed by laws of flow of fluids.

An outdoor fireplace is a place for building fires outside of the home. Similar in construction to an indoor fireplace, an outdoor fireplace is usually added to a stone, brick, or concrete patio. It often consists of a firebox and a chimney. The firebox is typically constructed with a smoke shelve incorporated although straight firebox designs are not uncommon since chimney draft is not always a concern for an outdoor fireplace. As with indoor fireplaces, an outdoor fireplace requires cleaning and maintenance to keep it looking and working at its best. While an outdoor fireplace may not need to be cleaned as often, it will need to be cleaned regularly in order to keep it reasonably tidy and maintained and to remove ash build.

While indoor fireplaces are traditionally designed for heating, an outdoor fireplace is usually used for cooking. Many are designed to double as wood-fired ovens that allow homeowners to create meals such as pizzas and casseroles. Entire outdoor kitchens can evolve from the fireplace.

A firebox or firepit is the part of the fireplace where fuel is combusted, in distinction from the hearth, chimney, mantel, overdoor and flue elements of the total fireplace system. The firebox normally sits on a masonry base at the floor level of the room. Some fireboxes are large in proportion so that a person could actually walk inside, or in extreme cases, have a small meeting using built-in benches inside. An example of the latter oversized construction can be found in the great hall of Muchalls Castle in Scotland.