Clean Your Chimney Before Santa Arrives

You might not realize this, but cleaning your chimney is an important part of keeping your home safe during winter, not only for Santa’s sake, but also your family's. During a chimney cleaning, your professional chimney sweep will remove creosote buildup and check to see if there's any damage inside your chimney.

There are multiple things that cause chimney fires, but the most common causes of chimney fires tend to include the following:

• Creosote buildup: Even though you don't always see the inside of your chimney, it gets dirty like any other part of your home. And unfortunately the only way to prevent creosote from building up in your chimney, is to never use your fireplace. When this layer of buildup in your chimney can cause sparks that can lead to a chimney fire.
• Rubble: Your chimney is the perfect place for rubble, like leaves, small twigs and other things to accumulate. Birds and small mammals also have a tendency to make nests in chimneys. When you use your fireplace, this rubble can catch fire.
• Structural problems: In order to channel smoke and harmful gases from your home, your chimney needs to be structurally right. The chimney needs to be build large enough to accommodate the size of your fireplace. Your chimney also needs to be well-maintained. If the inside of your chimney has cracks, or the lining of your chimney is damaged, this could pose an additional risk.
• Irresponsible fireplace use: It's recommended that you have your chimney cleaned and inspected every year, but if you aren't using your fireplace responsibly, even an annual chimney inspections might not be enough. To prevent chimney damage, you should avoid making your fires too hot, as this can cause the inside lining of your chimney walls to crack. Using unseasoned wood or not opening the damper wide enough can also be problematic, as this can cause creosote to build up in your chimney faster, increasing the risk of a chimney fire.

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How Often Does a Chimney Need to Be Cleaned?

As indicated by the Chimney Safety Institute of America (CSIA), chimneys should be cleaned once there is 1/8″ of creosote as well as residue development inside the chimney liner. As per the National Fire Protection Association (NFPA), all chimneys ought to be cleaned once per year, no matter what. So which is correct, and does everybody need to get their fireplace cleaned and reviewed, regardless of whether the chimney is not really utilized? This article is here to answer these questions for you.

A chimney sweep evacuates creosote, residue, and blockages from chimney liners, fireboxes, smoke chambers, and dampers. Keeping the chimney framework spotless and free of hindrances is important for various reasons, which are all connected with security, the operation, or the life of your fireplace framework. Basically a fireplace which isn't kept up can turn into a fire risk and can decay to the point that repairs are very expensive.

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Chimney Cleaning Importance: Safety tips for before you spark up the logs this winter

With natural gas and propane costs rising, you'll likely be looking to the old chimney this winter to help cut your home-warming bills. In any case, before you start up the logs, note that chimneys and chimneys are associated with 42 percent of all home fires. So first ensure yours is up to snuff by following the security tips underneath.

Chimney Cleaning Importance Safety tips for before you spark up the logs this winter from ChimneySweepsWest

Reasons to Call a Chimney Sweep

In case you're new to the universe of chimneys, you may not know precisely what a chimney sweep does. Like the name infers, these experts clear (i.e., clean) fireplaces. Yet, many likewise perform other critical assignments, for example, diagnosing issues and making repairs and substitutions. Knowing what a chimney sweep does now, we need to discuss reasons to get one of these specialists out to your home.

There's water inside the firebox. If you have a stack top set up to keep rain from entering the fireplace, in the event that you see water in your firebox, it implies there's a break some place. Water that gets into a firebox may come through breaks in the blocks and mortar of the stack. Serious and costly harm will happen in the long run if the issue isn't settled, and in the greater part of cases, only a professional chimney sweep can accurately diagnose where the rupture exists and its degree.

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Are Chimney Caps Important?

Not every house with a chimney has a chimney cap fitted. And despite the fact that chimney caps aren't very expensive, homeowners often neglect having one installed, believing they aren't important to the overall function of the chimney.

However, if more homeowners knew the value of chimney caps, they wouldn't be so reluctant about getting them. The relatively low investment of getting a chimney cap, could literally save thousands of dollars down the line.

Not quite sure whether getting a chimney cap is necessary? Here's why you should have a chimney cap installed on your home this winter.

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The Importance of Chimney Caps

It is safe to say that you are another mortgage holder with an old chimney? Assuming this is the case, you may not see that it's feeling the loss of a chimney cap. A few property holders in the past didn't perceive their significance, and frequently they weren't added to their chimney. Chimney caps are likewise regularly dismissed in light of the fact that they are low support and "out of the picture, therefore irrelevant".

Amid the an ordinary winter, there are various little creatures that may look for shield in a warm and dry condition like a chimney such as chipmunks, squirrels, and even raccoons. In the spring, you will probably discover winged animals settling in your fireplace. These creatures can leave combustible flotsam and jetsam, make blockages, and even suffocate and die. It can be hard to expel creatures from the fireplace humanely. In this manner it's less demanding and regularly less expensive to keep this event at bay by introducing a chimney cap!

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Why You Should Install a Chimney Cap

While you may not be personally acquainted with the life systems of your home's chimney or fireplace, a chimney cap assumes a critical part in your home's chimney framework. In the event that your home doesn't as of now have one, here are five reasons why you ought to consider introducing a chimney cap.

Why You Should Install a Chimney Cap from ChimneySweepsWest