A retired guy in Tulsa taught me more about draft than any manual

Last fall I was doing a routine sweep on a house in the historic district, and the homeowner, this retired engineer, came out to the driveway to watch. He didn't talk much, just stood there with his coffee for about ten minutes while I set up the rotary kit. Then he pointed at the chimney cap and said, 'you know that thing is choking her, right?' I figured he was just being a know-it-all, but he showed me the cap had a mesh so fine you could barely see through it. We spent the next hour taking it off, and the draft difference was night and day, the smoke test moved like it was on a string. He told me he'd swapped five caps in 20 years because every new one was tighter than the last, and nobody ever checks the mesh spec. I've since started asking customers when they last replaced their cap, and I've found three more in my own route with the same issue. Anyone else run into caps that look fine but kill the draw?

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