Having a chimney cap on your chimney is an absolute necessity. Why?
Well it’s pretty simple really, when you burn fires, a certain amount of the smoke is going to cling to the walls of your flue, called creosote. Creosote on its own, although highly flammable once it’s in large quantities, won’t harm your chimney, but once creosote mixes with water it becomes highly acidic and actually starts to eat away at the silica inside your mortar joints.
The mortar joints are the cement product that holds your chimney flue together. Once the silica or the bonding agent is gone from these joints, the mortar reverts back to sand, once that’s happened it’s only a matter of time before it’s going to fall out and deteriorate.
Once you’ve lost the mortar between your terracotta flue tiles, you leave yourself open to some really scary scenarios. First, when you burn wood you create carbon dioxide, carbon monoxide, and a few other gasses at the same time. Normally this isn’t an issue when your fireplace is working correctly, but since you didn’t have a cap installed, those gasses are free to leave your flue and possibly enter other parts of your home.
We can get a chimney cap for any shape or size chimney, and we offer warranties on all chimney caps that we install. We are experts at looking for damage, if you just noticed you haven’t had a cap on for some time.
ARC Chimney Sweeps also has the ability to get custom chimney caps made in an assortment of metals, colors, and designs.
Call ARC Chimney Sweeps today at (888) 998-2258 and receive a free inspection with every chimney cap!