Salem · Utah County
Caps, Covers and Dampers for Salem Chimneys
Subdivisions built on former farmland have young trees and wide gaps between houses. The chimneys standing in them take weather that an older, sheltered street never sees.
Exposure is the difference
Drive through the newer parts of Salem and count the mature trees. There are not many, because the ground was in agriculture until recently and the landscaping is still growing in. A chimney on a street like that stands in unbroken wind and unbroken sun, and both matter. Wind lifts caps and drives rain sideways into any gap. Ultraviolet exposure cooks the sealant at the storm collar and the caulk joints on a stucco chase until they harden, shrink and crack. Neither happens as fast on an older, sheltered lot with fifty-year-old trees around it.
The chase cover is the cap, on most Salem chimneys
If your chimney is a framed and stuccoed box rather than brick, the thing keeping water out is a large flat sheet of metal, not the small hood over the flue. That sheet is the single most important component on the chimney and the one homeowners have most often never heard of. It should be stainless, sloped so nothing stands on it, cross-broken down the middle for stiffness, and turned down at the edges so water drips clear of the finish instead of running down the face and staining it.
A great many were built flat, in galvanized steel, without a drip edge. Those rust from the middle outward, and the first sign is usually not water inside; it is rust streaking down the stucco.
Keeping animals out without trapping them in
Open ground and irrigation attract birds, and an open flue is the best cavity on the street. Caps with proper mesh solve that permanently, but the sequence matters. We check that the flue is empty before anything gets fixed over the top of it, because capping a nest is how a small job becomes an unpleasant one.
Top dampers earn their keep in a cold town
Salem sits high enough that the heating season runs long at both ends, and for every week of it a worn-out throat plate amounts to an opening in the roof nobody can shut. Fitting a gasketed damper up at the crown ends that. The heated air stops disappearing up the stack around the clock, and the flue below it stays dry, which slows every other form of deterioration described on this page.
Waterproofing done properly
Only on sound masonry, only with a vapor-permeable repellent, and only after the crown and flashing are right. Brick has to breathe. Anything that forms a film across it traps water inside the wall, and the freeze after that does more damage than the rain ever would have.
Questions
Caps & Dampers in Salem — common questions
There are rust streaks running down our stucco chimney.
That is the chase cover telling you it has failed. Water is standing on it, rusting it through, and carrying the rust down the finish. The staining is cosmetic and can be cleaned; the reason for it is not, because the same water is going down inside the chase into framing you cannot see.
Birds nested in our flue last spring. Will they come back?
If the flue is still open, yes, often to the same chimney year after year. The permanent answer is a properly meshed cap fitted after the flue has been cleared and confirmed empty. We would not fit one over an active nest, and depending on the season there may be a right time to do the clearing.
Does a top-sealing damper replace the old one or work with it?
It works instead of it, in practical terms. The original throat damper usually stays in place because removing it is unnecessary work, but it stops being the thing that seals. The new damper closes at the crown with a gasket and is operated by a cable that hangs down into the firebox.
Our chimney is on the windward side of the house. Is a taller cap better?
Height helps draft, not weather resistance, and the two are separate questions. For an exposed Salem stack the things that matter are how the cap is fixed down and how the flashing and collar are sealed. We would look at the mounting before adding height, unless the fireplace also drafts poorly, in which case both are on the table.
Also in Salem
Our other services here
Chimney Sweep Inspection Chimney Repair Fireplace Repair Installation Gas Fireplace Dryer Vents All Salem services
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