When to Hire a Chimney Repair Contractor

Hello World!  Welcome Friends!  Fireplaces offer a lot to the home other than being pleasing to the eye and relaxing as they can also come in handy during winter to keep your home warm and comfy. These fireplaces are usually linked to a chimney with a tube design and connected to your home’s roof. This chimney provides a path through which the gases can pass to ensure proper ventilation of your home.

After a while, the accumulation of debris and buildup in the chimneys becomes a barrier to the smooth working of your home’s fireplace. When this happens, the chimney needs to be cleaned and swept to ensure its safety and integrity. While you can do this by yourself, hiring a professional with the appropriate expertise, tools, and knowledge is best. But what’s the best time to hire a chimney repair contractor? Learn more here in this insightful guide on the different instances when you need to hire a chimney repair contractor.

1. During the Inspection of Your Chimney

Prevention is better than cure, so it’s best to hire a chimney repair contractor to prevent a possible issue with your chimney before it gets worse. Doing this is advised because you most likely don’t have the expertise and experience to identify a potential problem in advance.

But with a chimney repair contractor, you don’t have to worry about such issues. This is so because a professional can quickly pinpoint a problem with the chimney’s inner structure and fireplace that you might have overlooked. Examples of such minor issues include a destroyed liner, loose flashing, and cracked brickwork. Although all these are minor problems, failing to address them adequately and fast will only result in more damage to your home in the long run. As a result, you’ll be forced to spend more money than when you left the inspection job to an expert chimney repair contractor.

2. Enhance the Fireplace and Chimney Efficiency 

You want the fireplace and chimney to always perform optimally because this produces fewer harmful emissions and smoke to the environment. However, this goal can only be realized if a chimney repair contractor routinely cleans and inspects your chimney and fireplace. As a result, the fire burns a lot more efficiently and increases heat production to warm your home.

Besides improving the fireplace’s overall performance, cleaning and sweeping the chimney helps prevent avoidable issues in the future. Therefore, you can enjoy peace of mind knowing that your fireplace will be in perfect working condition even during winter. After all, the last thing you want for your fireplace is to develop issues during these colder months.

3. Repair Flue Liner

Another instance to hire a chimney repair contractor is when you want to repair the flue liner. This is an essential chimney component that helps safeguard your house from carbon monoxide and fire. The flue liner offers the needed insulation during the combustion process, preventing carbon monoxide leakage through the cracks and into your home. It also insulates your chimney from the extremely high temperatures generated by the fire burning in the furnace.

Because of the flue liner’s essential role, you must ensure it’s always in perfect working condition. You can best ensure this by hiring a chimney repair contractor to clean the flue liner at least once a year. This routine cleaning will help eliminate the accumulated soot and creosote that destroy the flue liner by letting in moisture which causes it to wear down much faster. This saves you the trouble of replacing the flue liner, which can last you much longer.

But if the masonry flue liner has already been destroyed, it must be repaired by a chimney repair contractor. This is crucial because any shoddy work will lead to the accumulation of creosote, which will lead to a fire in the chimney or carbon monoxide production. To avoid such unwanted problems, you can hire a professional chimney repair contractor because they are experts who know how to reline your current liner or install a new flue liner.

4. Prevent Fires

The do-it-yourself (DIY) approach is appealing if you’re a homeowner doing all sorts of home repairs because it helps you cut down costs. However, this isn’t to say that this is advised, especially regarding chimney repairs, because DIY cleaning of your home’s chimney can trigger the breakout of fire. This typically happens because creosote, a black, tar-like substance that’s gradually accumulated due to burning wood, is prone to triggering a fire breakout. The fire can be caused by something minor such as high temperatures or a stray spark.

The greater accumulation of creosote in the chimney also causes the fire outbreaks to last for much longer and be extremely hot. As a result, this causes the chimney to suffer more extensive damage, as well as other areas of your home. Once the creosote extensively builds up, you’ll have no option but to hire a chimney repair contractor to remove it. This is because this professional has the necessary chemicals and equipment to remove the creosote accumulated inside the chimney.

5. Want to Boost Your Chimney’s Strength

The chimney must be robust enough to ensure optimal functioning. This can only be guaranteed if you hire a chimney repair contractor to regularly do sweeping services to look out for any possible issues. If they notice anything, this professional will offer much-needed restoration services to boost the chimney’s strength.

6. Prevent Smoke Damage

Regular use of your chimney will result in the accumulation of debris that ends up blocking the tunnel. When the chimney tunnel becomes too tiny, smoke finds it more challenging to pass through the spaces. As a result, this smoke retreats back and eventually passes through the fireplace and into your home.

The presence of smoke in your home is unwanted. When it’s not controlled well, it can result in severe smoke damage and will expose you and your family or friends to toxic fumes that might severely affect everyone’s overall well-being.

7. Fix Brick and Mortar Issues

Another reason you need to hire a chimney repair contractor is that they can repair brick-and-mortar problems before they get any worse. This professional will look at the broken, missing, or deteriorating flue tiles and bricks during the process. If they see any that even has a minor crack, they’ll replace it immediately before the problem spirals out of control.

If you ignore hiring a chimney repair contractor on time, the damage to bricks and mortar will continue to be undetected. When this persists over a prolonged period, you’ll have no choice but to rebuild the entire chimney. Luckily, you can avoid such problems by hiring a professional chimney repair contractor that can help you identify chimney issues such as brick spalling much sooner. They can fix problems before they get any worse and it helps reduce the repair cost substantially.

8. Ensure Cleaning Gets Done In the Safest Way Possible

Cleaning your home’s fireplace and chimney is a job you can do yourself if you’re passionate about DIY. However, this job, albeit looking quite simple yet it’s dangerous because you expose yourself to unwanted harm. This is because you’ll need to climb to high heights to access the chimney. In addition, you’ll have to deal with soot and using heavy tools that, if not handled with care, can result in a fall.

It’s best to avoid all these possible issues by leaving the job of cleaning and sweeping your home’s chimney to a chimney repair contractor. This expert boasts valuable expertise and experience on how to clean the chimney while still safeguarding themselves safely. They can do this as they carry all the tools to clean the chimney.

9. When There’s Need For Repointing and Tuckpointing 

Bricks are sturdy and can comfortably last a decade without suffering any damage. The same can’t be said of mortar which starts to degrade after 20 years. When this happens, there’s a need for repointing and tuckpointing the mortar to safeguard your chimney’s structural integrity.

Once the mortar has been reinforced, tuckpointing becomes necessary to boost the overall aesthetic appeal of the chimney. The tuckpointing process is almost similar to the more expensive red rubbing technique, and it looks to create a red finish and a distinct contrast between the mortar and red brick.

10. You Want to Waterproof Your Chimney

There’s no better way to prevent water from leaking through crevices in the chimney than by waterproofing. The chimney repair contractor does this by applying a minimum of two coats of water-resistant sealant on the whole chimney. This will seal all the cracks and is an excellent way to avoid water leaks altogether.

Takeaway

Properly maintaining the chimney in your home is essential as this addition ensures your home is well-ventilated. And with such a significant role, you must ensure the chimney is in perfect working condition. There’s no better way of guaranteeing this than by hiring a chimney repair contractor at the most appropriate time. If you’re uncertain of the best time, this guide has outlined the different scenarios for when it’s best to hire a chimney repair contractor.

Click the links below for any posts you have missed:

What to Do With Water-Damaged Carpets and Rugs

How Your Home Can Benefit From New Windows

Creating the Perfect Hairstyle at Home: 6 Useful Tips

6 Ways to Clean Up the Mess After a Home Renovation

How to Make Your Bathroom Both Useful and Beautiful

How to Design Your Garden and Enjoy the Time Spent There

I’d love for you to join my email list!  You’ll receive a notification straight to your inbox which will include links to my latest home project posts!  Simply enter your address below.

 

Thanks for stopping by!  Have a wonderful day/night depending on where you are in the world!  Go with God and remember to be kind to one another!

Toodles,