Chimney Sweep, Repair and Inspection in Alpine

Height, cold air, and the pace creosote builds

A flue stays clean only while the smoke moving through it stays hot. Alpine works against that on two fronts at once. Great rooms are tall, so the flues serving them run long, and a long flue gives exhaust more distance over which to shed its heat. Those chimneys also tend to run up an exterior wall rather than through the middle of the house, so the liner is chilled from the outside for its whole length. Exhaust that cools past the condensation point partway up drops its tar on the wall instead of carrying it out the top. That is why a household here burning the same wood on the same number of nights as one down on the valley floor can still open the damper in spring and find noticeably more deposit waiting.

Water gets in first; the frost does the damage

Most of the masonry we end up rebuilding in this town did not fail from heat. It failed because water found a way in through a cracked crown, a tired flashing joint or an open flue, and then the temperature dropped overnight. Saturated brick and mortar expand as they freeze, and at this elevation the first hard freeze comes earlier in the fall and the last one later in the spring than it does a few miles downhill. Every cycle opens the joint a little further. Caught while it is still a hairline in the crown, it is a morning's work with sealant. Left for three winters, the top courses have to come off and go back.

Exposure the rest of the valley never sees

On the upper streets there is often nothing upwind of the roof at all. Wind coming down out of the canyons reaches the cap, the storm collar and the chase top directly, and those are the parts we most often find lifted, loosened or simply gone after a rough night. They are also the parts that take the least work to put back. A cap put back on in September is the difference between a dry flue and a season of rain and snowmelt running straight down the inside of the liner.