Chimney and Fireplace Work in West Valley City

Built quickly, and it shows at the top

The ranches, split-levels and modest brick homes that make up much of this city were put up in the decades when a chimney was a routine, unremarkable part of a fast build. The stack itself is often perfectly sound. What was almost never done well is the crown, the sloped slab of concrete at the very top whose only job is to throw water clear of the brick below it. Poured thin and flat, as it usually was, a crown cracks within a decade or two. After that, every rain and every thaw is directed into the masonry rather than off it.

What follows is slow and entirely predictable. The brick takes on water, the temperature drops overnight, the water expands as it freezes, and the face of the brick is pushed outward by a fraction of an inch. Repeat that a few thousand times and the faces flake away, the joints open, and the top courses start to lean. That is why so much of the rebuilding we do around here is confined to the last three or four feet of the stack. It is the part that has spent the longest being wet.

Appliances added to fireplaces that were not built for them

A great many open fireplaces in these homes were converted at some point to hold a stove or an insert, occasionally in the 1970s and often without anyone lining the flue. This matters more than it sounds. A closed appliance sends its exhaust up at a much lower temperature and a much smaller volume than an open fire does, so a flue sized correctly for the fireplace is now enormously oversized for what is venting through it. The gases cool on the way up, condense against cold tile, and the deposit left behind is the sticky, tar-like kind rather than the dry flaky kind a brush will take off.

If there is an insert sitting in an old masonry opening in your house and nobody has ever raised the subject of a liner with you, that is the first thing to have looked at, ahead of any sweep. It is also the single most common reason we tell someone their chimney needs work before it is used again. We are licensed and insured, and we would rather say so plainly than sweep around a problem and leave it in place.