Chimney and Fireplace Service for Magna Homes

Two building eras, two sets of problems

The older part of town went up when mine and smelter work drew people to the foot of the range, and those houses have masonry chimneys running on clay tile or, in the oldest of them, on nothing at all. What we look for there is open mortar joints and a split crown, because both let water into a stack that has already absorbed decades of it. The subdivisions built out on the flats since the nineties are a different animal entirely: a factory-built firebox venting up through a framed chase, where the weak point is the chase cover and the flashing rather than the brick.

Wind is the local variable

Very little stands between a roofline out here and the weather. Air moves across open ground and spills down off the Oquirrhs, and a flue that would pull steadily in a sheltered street can get pushed backward. In the room that shows up as a puff of smoke when you open the door, or as a gas appliance that keeps shutting itself off for no reason you can see. The correction is nearly always at the top of the stack, in the form of a cap sized and anchored for the load, and not in the firebox where people look first.

Grit gets into everything

Fine dust carried on that same wind reaches the burner ports and pilot assembly of a sealed gas unit and the outside flap of a dryer duct. A flap that can no longer swing shut sits half open and packs with lint and grit until the run chokes. Both are short jobs. Both get skipped for years, because neither one gives you any warning until the appliance simply quits on a cold morning.

Burn season here runs roughly October into April, so the sensible time to book is before it starts rather than during the first cold snap. We are licensed and insured, we photograph what we find at the top and inside the flue, and if a stack needs more than a sweep we will say what and why instead of letting it ride another winter.