Midway · Wasatch County
Chimney Sweeping Across Midway's Two Kinds of House
There are effectively two housing stocks in Midway and they need different attention. The old village lots and the newer building on the slopes and around the resorts produce completely different findings when we open a flue.
The old village
The original part of town has small-footprint houses with masonry that has been standing a long time. Many of those chimneys were built for stoves rather than open fireplaces, then adapted when heating changed, and the adaptations are where our attention goes. A flue sized for a small stove and now serving a wide open firebox will spill smoke and lay down deposits no matter how clean it is, and sweeping it does not fix that. When we find it, we say so and explain what the actual fix would be.
These older stacks also tend to have unlined or single-wythe sections, and mortar joints that have been repointed more than once by more than one hand. The sweep matters less on those than the camera pass does.
The newer building
Houses put up in the last few decades here mostly run factory-built fireboxes venting through insulated metal pipe, often inside a tall stone-faced chase that looks like solid masonry from the outside but is not. They sweep fast and clean. What we spend the time on instead is the chase top, the joints between pipe sections, and the clearance between that pipe and the framing around it, because that is the failure mode on a factory-built system and it is invisible from the room.
How often, and what changes it
Once a season is the baseline for anything burned regularly. Two things move it. The first is what you burn: unseasoned wood, or anything resinous, produces several times the deposit of dry hardwood, and green wood is the single most common cause of a bad flue we see. The second is occupancy pattern. A house used most weekends of the winter accumulates faster than the once-a-year figure assumes, and a house sitting empty accumulates almost nothing but collects nests instead.
What the visit looks like
Drop cloths down, the opening sealed, a HEPA vacuum running the whole time, and rods sized to your flue. Then photographs of the smoke chamber, the liner and the crown, handed over at the end. If we find something that a sweep will not fix, you get the picture and the explanation before any quote, and you are free to take both elsewhere.
Questions
Chimney Sweep in Midway — common questions
We only use the fireplace on weekends we are up in Midway. How often should it be swept?
Judge it by burn hours rather than by the calendar. A house used most winter weekends can easily accumulate as much as a full-time home. A property that sits empty most of the year needs inspecting annually, mostly for nests and debris, and sweeping less often.
Our chimney is stone on the outside. Is it a masonry chimney?
Not necessarily. A lot of newer Midway chimneys are a framed chase with stone veneer on the face and a metal flue inside. It changes what can go wrong and what a sweep should be looking at, and we can usually tell you which you have within a couple of minutes of arriving.
What kind of wood should we be burning here?
Anything split and seasoned at least a year, stacked off the ground and under cover. Wood that still hisses or bubbles at the end is carrying water, and burning wet wood cools the flue and lays down creosote several times faster than dry wood does.
Do you have to get on the roof?
Not to sweep. We work from the firebox upward so the dust stays inside the seal. We do want a look at the crown and cap, and if the roof is steep or icy we will do that from a ladder at the eave or with a camera rather than take the risk.
Also in Midway
Our other services here
Inspection Chimney Repair Fireplace Repair Installation Gas Fireplace Caps & Dampers Dryer Vents All Midway services
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