Home fireplaces are a great way to keep your home warm during the winter months. Not only can you create the perfect room temperature, but you can also have an attractive living space with the fireplace in the backdrop. You collect wood that you can use for kindling and burn it. The smoke created from the fire rises through the chimney, escaping the home through an opening in the roof. The only real problems with having a fireplace come from improper installation or care of the attached chimney.
Chimneys are very important because they’re the only way that smoke and carbon monoxide is removed from your home, so proper chimney maintenance is necessary. If you begin to notice smoke not filtering out of your home correctly, call a chimney company right away to inspect it.
DIY Chimney Cleaning vs Hiring a Professional Chimney Sweep
Chimney sweeping is an important service to reduce the risk of a fire. As you burn wood in a fireplace, a wood preservative and resin called Creosote builds up on the fireplace and chimney walls. This isn’t a good thing because Creosote is highly flammable; one spark can create a huge fire. Therefore, it’s important to have the fireplace and chimney cleaned from time to time. Whether you handle chimney cleaning yourself or hire a professional is up to you based on how much work you’d like to take on.
DIY Chimney Cleaning
Although there’s no studies to support this idea, people have said that burning citrus peels can improve the safety of the chimney by aiding in the prevention of Creosote build-up. Give it a try if you’d like, but this does not replace cleaning. To start the sanitizing process, you’ll need to purchase a chimney brush, a special chimney cleaning solution, and brick cleaner. From here, your main role is to scrub until everything comes off. While it might be tempting to do it yourself, we caution against it simply because of the amount of work involved and the mess it will create. Consider the position you’ll be sitting in if you’re cleaning the chimney chute. You would be sitting under the opening. When you scrub something directly above you, it falls down on your head.
Professional Chimney Sweep
Professional chimney sweeps set up special protective barriers next to the fireplace to prevent soot and dirt from ruining your home. Then, they go onto the roof of your house, undo the chimney cap, and scrub from the top down. Because they’ve performed these types of jobs thousands of times, their work is very efficient. They can clean the chimney shoot in an hour and leave your home looking like new. We highly recommend leaving the chimney cleaning to the pros instead of trying the DIY method.
Chimney Repairs
Chimneys make a great addition to a home until there’s a crack, a water leak, or something else. Cracks can cost anywhere from $200 to a few thousand dollars depending on the extent of the damage. Temperature changes cause expansion and contraction, which can sometimes lead to cracking in the bricks or stones that make up the chimney chute. If repaired quickly, the issue can be resolved cheaply. If the crack goes unnoticed, it may cause structural damage, requiring upwards of $3,000 for chimney repair.
Chimney water leaks typically occur near the roof when rainfall seeps into a poorly installed flashing. Water damages the mortar the holds the bricks in place, and it can also cause rusting. Luckily, water leaks are not very expensive, averaging $275 to fix.
If you have large cracks in your chimney, water leaks, need a cleaning or an inspection, or the chimney is starting to lean in a particular direction, call a professional chimney company for help. Their experience will end up saving you money in the long run.