By Daniel Watkins, Noble Chimney Sweepers. If smoke curls out over the fireplace opening instead of going up, the first thing most people blame is a dirty flue. Sometimes that is the answer. Often, though, the chimney simply is not…
By Daniel Watkins, Noble Chimney Sweepers. A homeowner calls a roofer about a ceiling stain near the fireplace. The roofer looks at the shingles, finds them in decent shape, and says the roof is fine. The stain comes back with…
By Daniel Watkins, Noble Chimney Sweepers. Summer is renovation season, and the projects that wrapped up in July and August are being enjoyed right now — new kitchen, refinished basement, floors replaced upstairs. What most homeowners do not connect is…
By Daniel Watkins, Noble Chimney Sweepers. Two dryer vents can sit in two houses on the same street and behave completely differently. The one that clogs first is almost always the longer one. Duct length is the single biggest variable…
Almost every masonry firebox develops cracks. That is normal — fire clay and refractory mortar expand when hot and contract when cold, and after a few hundred fires that movement shows up as lines in the panels and joints. What…
If the brick face on your chimney is flaking off in thin sheets, crumbling at the corners, or leaving a small pile of orange grit on the roof shingles, that is spalling. It is not cosmetic. It is the outer…
By Daniel Watkins, Noble Chimney Sweepers. One of the most common calls I get is some version of “my fireplace worked fine for years and now it pushes smoke into the living room.” Nine times out of ten nothing is…
By Daniel Watkins, Noble Chimney Sweepers. A homeowner sent me a photo last week of white, chalky patches spreading across the brick of her chimney and asked whether someone had splashed paint on it. Nobody had. That is efflorescence, and…
By Daniel Watkins, Noble Chimney Sweepers. Every August I get called out to fireplaces where the flue looks less like a sooty pipe and more like someone poured black syrup down it and let it harden. That shiny, tar-like coating…
By Daniel Watkins, Noble Chimney Sweepers. Nobody thinks about their fireplace in the middle of August. That is exactly why a stuck-open damper goes unnoticed for years, quietly venting the air conditioning you are paying for straight up the chimney.…
