Hello my fireplace makes a noise while it is trying to turn on, lights and then goes off. I have replaced the ignitor and cleaned and reattached the White wire. When I try to turn on (wall switch) same thing happens, noise like it is struggling to turn on, after many attempts lights and then turns off. Can somebody please help me, thank you.

Hi Been in the house around 6 years or so. Used the wood fire place every winter. The chimney is generally swept every 2 years. Ever since our gas furnaces and gas hot water was replaced there has been a strong smell of wood smoke in our second floor and basement when we have a fire lit. Its an open fire place (ie no insert). We have 1 clean out for the fire in the basement. It does have some significant ash volume in it - the sweeper guy said I could clean it out with a shop vac but its not really a worry at this point. I remove the ashes from the fireplace directly rather than push it into the basement. The chimney runs thru the house mostly. Our Den has a cathedral ceiling and the chimney is attached to side of the house above the den. ie the last 10ft or so are outside. What I've found is that by opening a small window in the basement about an inch the wood smoke smell upstairs disappears. There is a very strong flow of air through that window when I open it. It takes around 30 mins or so and the smell is gone on the second floor. The old furnaces vented (along with the water heater) thru one of the vents in the chimney (two total). The furnaces heat the first and second floor each plus there are some vents in the finished part of the basement. All of the HVAC equipment is in the basement next to the fireplace structure (brick). The new furnaces are direct vented outside but pull air in from the basement. The new water heater is direct vented outside as well. The chimney vent for the old furnaces is capped in the basement but not at the top of the chimney. We decided to replace the water heater at the same time to avoid having to put a smaller liner in the chimney vent. Both vents at the top of the chimney are at the same height. So I'm trying to work out a permanent solution and avoid opening the basement window when we use the fireplace. There is alot of water pipes near the window (within 5ft or so) and I don't want them to freeze if we leave the window open. Any thoughts on the next steps ? Thanks Mick