Inspections & Sweeping
Chimney Inspection & Sweeping
A camera up the flue, photographs of what is actually there, and a written report you keep. NFPA 211 asks for an inspection every year — on a house that burns wood hard, that is not a formality.
Why Every Year
What a Year of Burning Leaves Behind
Every fire you light puts unburned fuel on the inside of your flue. It starts as soot you can brush off. Given a cool flue, wet wood or a damped-down stove, it turns into tar, and then into a hard glaze that will not come off with a brush at all. That glaze is the fuel for a chimney fire.
The other half of the job has nothing to do with soot. Water gets into a crown, freezes, and opens it. A liner cracks. A cap blows off and a season of rain goes straight down the flue. None of that announces itself from the living room.
Stage One
Dry, flaky soot
Brushes out. This is what a well-run stove burning seasoned wood leaves behind, and it is what an annual sweep is for.
Stage Two
Hard, shiny flakes
Tar has started to set. It takes rotary tooling to get out, and it usually means the flue is running cooler than it should — oversized flue, wet wood, or an appliance damped too far down.
Stage Three
Glazed creosote
A hard, tarry glaze running down the flue wall. Highly flammable, and a brush will not touch it. It comes off with chemical treatment and rotary work, or the liner comes out.
NFPA 211
The Three Levels of Inspection
Inspection levels are not a menu we invented. They are defined in NFPA 211, and which one your chimney needs depends on what has happened to it and what you are about to do with it.
Level 1
The Annual Look
The readily accessible portions of the chimney, the structure and the appliance connection. We check that the system is sound, correctly built for what it vents, and free of obstruction and combustible deposit. Sweeping happens here.
Level 2
Camera in the Flue
Everything in Level 1 plus accessible attics, crawl spaces and basements, and a video scan of the internal surfaces and joints of the flue. This is where cracked tiles, gaps at the joints and missing mortar actually show up.
Level 3
Opening It Up
Level 2, plus removal of permanently attached components — a chimney crown, a wall section, an appliance — where that is the only way to reach a hazard we have reason to believe is there.
The Visit
What Actually Happens at Your House
We cover the room before we open anything
Step one
Drop cloths, a HEPA vacuum at the firebox, and shoe covers. A chimney sweep who leaves soot on your carpet has done half a job. You should not be able to tell we were there except that the fireplace works better.
Swept from both ends
The sweep
Rods and the correct brush for your flue — poly for a stainless liner, wire for clay tile. Rotary tooling when the deposit has gone past the point a brush will move it. Smoke chamber and smoke shelf get cleaned too, not just the straight run.
Camera up the whole flue
The inspection
A camera goes up the flue on the Level 2 scan and we record it. Cracked tiles, open joints, spalling, a liner that has separated, an old unlined chimney that somebody attached a gas furnace to — it all shows on video, and you get to see it.
You get the pictures, then the price
The report
A written report with the photographs attached, and the code reference where one applies. We tell you what is urgent, what can wait a season, and what is simply old but fine. Nothing gets quoted before you have seen the picture of why.
Also Covered
It Is Not Only Fireplaces
Call us before you light it again if
You heard a roar or a rumble from the chimney, saw sparks or heavy smoke coming out of the top, found flakes of hardened soot on the roof or in the yard, or the fire suddenly started spilling smoke into the room. Those are chimney fire signs. Stop using it and let us put a camera up it first.
Book It
Book Your Inspection
We inspect and sweep year round — and the schedule in September is a great deal easier to get onto than the one in November. Anything we find, we can also fix: see chimney restoration.