Sweeping Chimneys at the Mouth of Spanish Fork Canyon

Wind is what makes this town different

Spanish Fork sits where a major canyon opens onto the valley floor, and the air that comes down it does not arrive gently. On a gusty night the pressure at the top of a flue can swing hard enough to stall a fire that was drawing perfectly an hour earlier. A stalled fire is a cool fire, and a cool fire is the one that lays down deposit.

That mechanism is the part most homeowners miss. Two identical fireplaces, one out west near the fields and one a few streets from the canyon mouth, will not have the same liner at the end of March even if they burned the same cord of wood.

Then the valley lid closes

From roughly December through February, cold air pools on the Utah Valley floor under a warmer layer above it. Barometric pressure stops helping the chimney. Flues that vent fine in October go sluggish, people damp the fire down because the room is smoky, and the damped fire coats the liner faster still. It is a compounding problem, which is why we do not tell anyone here to stretch a sweep out to two seasons.

What the visit actually involves

The opening gets sealed before a single rod comes out of the van, and a HEPA-filtered vacuum runs the whole time we are in the room. We sweep from the firebox upward with brushes sized to your flue, then check the smoke chamber, the damper seat and the crown. Everything we looked at gets photographed and the pictures are yours to keep, so you can judge the chimney's condition for yourself rather than taking a stranger's word for it.

Where a sweep stops being the answer

If the deposit has gone hard and shiny, brushing will not touch it. That is glazed creosote, it usually means the flue has been running cool for a long time, and it needs a rotary head or a chemical treatment before it will come off. We would rather tell you that on the day than take payment for a cleaning that left the hazard in place.