Chimney Inspections for Genola Farmhouses

One stack, several flues, and no record of any of it

Older farmhouses commonly have a single masonry chimney serving more than one thing: an open fireplace, a furnace or water heater that was connected at some point, and sometimes a flue that has been abandoned and plastered over at the top. Where two flues share a stack there should be a solid masonry division between them for the full height. In old work that division is sometimes thin, sometimes broken down, and occasionally was never there. When it fails, exhaust from one appliance can cross into the other flue and come back into the house. You cannot see any of that from the room or the roof, which is the entire argument for putting a camera down.

Abandoned flues are their own hazard, because they are usually forgotten rather than properly sealed. An open, disused flue in a shared stack lets air move where nobody intended, and a flue that was capped at the top but left open at the bottom collects moisture.

Additions, and where the chimney passes through them

Genola is a small farming community at the south end of Utah Valley, and a house out here tends to stay in use for a very long time and to be altered by every family that has it. A back room added, a furnace swapped, a stove put into a shop or a porch, and nothing written down about any of it.

Every time a house is extended or a roof is altered, the relationship between the chimney and the structure changes. We look at how the stack passes through floors, ceilings and roof planes, checking for framing set too close to masonry, insulation added later and packed against a flue, and flashing that was reworked around a new roofline and never properly let into the brick. On a house that has grown over decades, the concealed sections are where the surprises are.

What a Level 2 gives you and when you need one

A Level 1 is the routine annual visual check when nothing about the system has changed. A Level 2 adds a camera scan of the full flue interior and inspection of accessible attic, crawl space and basement sections. You want the Level 2 when a property is changing hands, when you are connecting a different appliance, after any chimney fire or serious weather event, and any time you have inherited a system whose history you do not know. On an acreage sale it is normally the item a general inspector refers on rather than assesses, so having it done ahead of listing removes a negotiating point.

Our report is dated, written and photographed. Findings are separated into what is unsafe now and what is maintenance you can plan for, and we mark opinion as opinion. If we find nothing wrong, we write that down too, in a form you can hand to a buyer or an insurer. Licensed and insured.