If you live in an older home that was built before the 1940′s, your chimney was probably built without a clay tile liner. Starting in the 1940′s clay tile liners were built into the chimney during construction, and in more recent times many homes are built with prefabricated metal chimneys rather than with traditional brick and mortar ones.Read More

When you are considering installing a chimney liner, be sure to plan to include proper insulation in your design. You or your installer may be tempted to cut corners by putting a chimney liner inside the flue without insulating it, since it is cheaper and easier to do it that way, but the benefits of chimney liner insulation far outweigh the small cost of doing it properly.Read More

Chimneys are a wonderful thing. Not only do they add to the aesthetic beauty of a home, but they also help keep your family safe from the smoke and harmful gases that would leak into your house without them. So, since they are so important to protecting your family, it is imperative that they be protected themselves.Read More

If you have a wood burning fireplace inside your home, you can probably do some simple things to your fireplace and chimney to improve your home’s energy efficiency. Some of these are free and will give you an instant return on your time investment, while others can cost a bit of money.Read More

If your fireplace is not drawing well, you need to take steps to correct whatever is causing the problem. A badly drawing fireplace, or any other badly drawing fuel burning appliance, is a safety and maintenance hazard. If your fireplace does not draw well, it does not burn your firewood efficiently, so you get more creosote buildup inside your chimney, you waste money on fuel, you are likely to smell smoke inside your house.Read More

If you have a standard fireplace that vents up a brick and mortar masonry chimney, you probably enjoy building a roaring fire on a cold winter night and cozying up with a glass of fine wine or a good book or somebody special. You may not know that your fireplace is an air polluting energy hog.Read More

The inside of the chimney is not something most homeowners spend a lot of time thinking about, at least as long as everything appears to be working properly. But, chimney problems can begin long before you are aware of them and if you ignore them too long you could endanger your family’s health and safety.Read More

Energy is getting more and more expensive every day. Therefore, it is important to conserve as much as possible when it comes to heating and cooling your home. In order to help conserve energy in homes with chimneys, you should probably install a chimney damper. A chimney damper seals off the chimney flue while it is not in use and keeps that valuable cool or warm air in your house.Read More

Modern houses and other buildings usually have prefabricated metal fireplaces and flues, rather than traditional brick and mortar fireplaces with brick chimneys surrounding clay tile flues. The frame that is built around a modern prefabricated chimney is called a chase. The chase is usually constructed of wood framing covered with a skin of siding, masonry or stucco. In high quality construction, the space inside the chase outside the flue will be insulated.Read More

There are a lot of animal lovers out there who enjoy watching the birds and squirrels play around in their back yards. Then, there are those who like animals but curse the squirrel that keeps getting into the bird feeder. There are also those who would rather not have anything at all to do with these critters.Read More