Herriman Fireplaces, Flues and Gas Appliances

Very little of the housing here is old, and almost none of it is old masonry. What Herriman has instead is thousands of listed, factory-built fireplaces and sealed direct-vent gas units, put in by production builders to a specification, then handed over with a manual and a warranty that, understandably, nobody ever opened.

That changes what maintenance means. A masonry chimney is a structure, and you judge it on its condition. A listed appliance is a machine with a manufacturer's service schedule, clearances that were engineered rather than estimated, and replacement parts that have to match. Fitting a generic part into one of these voids the listing that made it safe to install in the first place. So a call here begins with establishing exactly which unit is in the wall, because the clearances, the service interval and the approved parts are all set by whoever built it, and they vary considerably from one make to the next.

The second thing we do is go outside. Along the western edge of the valley the ground below the Oquirrhs is open and unirrigated, and weather tends to arrive sideways as much as it falls straight down. Wind-driven rain and blowing snow get past terminations that would be entirely adequate on a sheltered lot, and they get in at the wall penetration or a chase seam rather than at the top, which is where people look. Spark screening also earns its keep here in a way it does not in an older tree-lined neighborhood, given what lies downwind of a roofline on this side of town.

The one thing no new subdivision has yet

A history. Most homes here are on their first or second owner, and a great many have had nobody look at the venting since the day the house was finished. That is not a crisis. It does mean a first inspection tends to turn up real things: a vent section that pulled apart in an attic, a termination screened shut with lint and dust, a refractory panel cracked by a fire hotter than the unit was rated to take. None of those announce themselves from the living room. They are either found or they are not.