Lindon · Utah County
Sweeping Chimneys in Lindon, Utah
Lindon grew fruit long before it grew subdivisions, and a lot of properties still have mature apple, cherry and apricot trees on them. What comes off those trees ends up in the fireplace, and that is worth talking about.
Fruitwood is excellent, and prunings are not the same thing
Seasoned fruitwood is genuinely good firewood. It is dense, it burns hot, it smells wonderful and it leaves very little behind. None of that applies to a branch cut this spring and burned this fall.
The trap is that prunings look dry. They are thin, the bark has gone gray, and they snap when you break them. Thin wood does dry faster than a split round, but a spring cut going onto a November fire has still spent most of its drying time in a pile in the yard, taking on the weather. Anything above roughly a fifth moisture by weight spends the first part of the burn boiling water instead of making heat, and the vapor it sends up a cool flue is what condenses out as creosote.
The fix is only patience. Cut, stack off the ground, cover the top and leave the sides open to the air, and burn it the winter after next rather than this one.
The other thing that goes in fireplaces around here
Yard waste generally. Green trimmings, leaves, cardboard, and occasionally offcuts from a project. Painted, stained, glued or pressure-treated lumber is the one to take seriously, because burning it puts things in your flue and your room that you would not choose to breathe, and it can produce deposits that behave very differently from ordinary wood creosote. If the wood has a finish on it, it belongs in the bin, not the firebox.
What our visit looks like
We seal the fireplace opening before the first tool comes out and run a filtered vacuum for the whole job, so nothing gets into the room. We brush the flue, clear the smoke shelf and chamber, check the damper actually operates, and clean the cap screen. Then you get photographs of the smoke chamber, the liner and the crown.
Once a year is the right interval for a regularly used fireplace. If the deposit we find is glazed and hard rather than flaky, brushing will not shift it, and we will tell you what caused it and what it actually takes to remove instead of billing you for a sweep that achieved nothing.
Questions
Chimney Sweep in Lindon — common questions
We burn apple and cherry from our own trees. Is that alright?
It is some of the best wood you can get, provided it has had a year or two stacked and covered. The problem is never the species here, it is the moisture. Green fruitwood loads a chimney as fast as anything else does.
How can I tell whether my wood is dry enough?
Split a piece and look at the fresh face. Dry wood is lighter than it looks, has checks radiating from the center of the end grain, and two pieces knocked together give a sharp crack rather than a dull thud. A moisture meter on a freshly split face settles it for a few dollars.
Will sweeping get soot in the house?
No. The opening is sealed and the vacuum runs continuously. Dust control is most of the craft of doing this in somebody's living room, and we take it seriously.
What if we only light it a handful of times a year?
You may not need an annual sweep, but you do want an annual look. Water damage, a failing damper and a nest do not care how often you light a fire, and they are what catches out light users.
Also in Lindon
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Inspection Chimney Repair Fireplace Repair Installation Gas Fireplace Caps & Dampers Dryer Vents All Lindon services
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