A simple sheet steel cover keeps this chimney sealed during fire season and a PVC toilet vent pipe protected with a metal covering
Look at your roof and you'll usually find a few places where something pokes through it: a chimney, a vent pipe, maybe an extraction fan or skylight. Each one is a small gap, and small gaps are exactly what embers are looking for.
It's easy to assume these fittings are sealed well enough already. But a chimney damper is built to manage smoke and draught, not to stop embers, and standard pipe flashings aren't always up to the job in a fire. Once embers get past them, they can start a fire inside your roof space where it's hard to spot early.
Risks
A chimney flue damper doesn't stop embers, it's designed to manage smoke and draught, so an uncovered chimney is a direct path into your roof space
Roof flashings around pipes and vents that aren't rated for bushfire conditions can leave gaps, or fail in the heat
PVC vent pipes, like the one venting a toilet or bathroom, can soften and melt in a fire's heat, opening up another entry point
Fixes
Cover your chimney opening with sheet steel or a fine metal mesh (with less than 2mm gaps) before fire season starts. Don't rely on the damper alone alone.
Fit purpose-made roof flashings around pipes and vents, rated to your home's Bushfire Attack Level (BAL) are sold at plumbing and hardware stores for both metal and tiled roofs
Protect PVC vent pipes with a temporary metal covering over the fire season
If you're not sure what's poking through your roof, or how well it's sealed, ask a roofer to check as part of a routine inspection
These are small fixes genuinely help. A day spent checking your chimney, vents and pipes addresses one of the easier-to-miss weak links on your roof.
