Sweeping Chimneys Across Magna

The older core

The streets nearest the old town center carry housing from the early decades of the last century, and the chimneys on them were built in an era when a house burned coal. Coal flues were made tall and narrow because coal smoke is dense and needs velocity, and many were built without a separate liner because the brickwork itself was considered the liner. When those houses were converted to gas, or later fitted with a wood-burning fireplace, the flue kept doing a job it was never sized for. Sweeping one of these is as much an examination as a cleaning: we are looking at the state of the mortar between the courses as we work down, because on an unlined stack the joints are the only thing between the flue and the framing.

Newer construction on open ground

The subdivisions built out from the old town are a different animal. Manufactured fireboxes, metal flues, and chase construction rather than solid brick. They foul more slowly, but they are far more exposed. There is nothing between the west edge of Magna and the Oquirrhs, and nothing much between the north edge and the lake, so a roofline here takes weather that a sheltered street in the middle of the valley never sees.

Wind changes what a fire does

A steady wind across a chimney top helps a flue. A gusty, shifting wind does not. When a gust reverses the pressure at the opening for a second or two, the fire gasps, burns cool for a moment and puts unburned smoke on the flue wall. Repeat that through an evening and the deposit adds up faster than the same fire in a sheltered location would produce.

How we work

Containment first, HEPA vacuum for the duration, rods and heads matched to the flue material. Brush type is not a detail: a wire head belongs in clay tile and will chew up the seams of a metal chimney. When we are finished you get the camera images, and if the fire was leaving a hard glaze rather than a soft deposit, we explain what caused it rather than brushing it and calling it done.