When my wife and I went up to the cabin, we didn’t care that it was winter.
We knew we had a fireplace that would keep us warm.
We wanted to be able to go to the ski slopes and do some skiing. You could only do that in the winter. When we got to the cabin, it was frigid inside. We had a small furnace we could turn on, but we preferred the fireplace. The pipes were all wrapped in heat tape so they wouldn’t freeze, so we never worried about using the furnace. We turned the furnace on only long enough for the fireplace to start working. We couldn’t get the fireplace to work. Even though I got the wood to burn, and I had the flue in the right position, I still had smoke pouring back into the cabin. I called the local HVAC company and asked if they knew of anyone who could look at the chimney. They gave me the number of the local chimney sweep. He came out and inspected the chimney and told me I had a real problem. It’s not like we didn’t already know that. He asked if we had a good cap over the chimney. I didn’t know if I had a cap. He said that water had gotten inside the chimney and it had built up an ice wall that had to melt before I could use the fireplace. I had never heard of a frozen chimney, but apparently it was a real thing. I was glad that we had the furnace as a backup heating system.