Chimney Sweep in Des Plaines, IL
Call (847) 238-9426Reading a Des Plaines chimney before anyone quotes it
Go stand in the basement first. Find the cleanout door at the stack base. Open it. Sand and orange crumbs mean the liner is shedding. Fluffy white crust is condensed flue gas eating mortar. Run a flashlight up the chamber. Daylight through a joint means a failed stack, not a tuckpointing job.
Now go outside with a house key. Scratch the brick above the roofline. Chicago common brick powders when it is spent. It is salmon colored, made from clay dug near the river, never fired for exposure. Builders faced the street elevation and left the chimney bare. The south and west faces usually go first here.
Check what vents into it. If the furnace exhausts through white plastic out a sidewall, a lone water heater is orphaned in a clay flue sized for two appliances. Exhaust stalls and condenses. Homeowners near O'Hare who took the sound insulation program got heavy attic work, which cools that flue further.
Cumberland and the older blocks off Miner Street have the softest masonry in town. Newer subdivision chimneys are usually framed chases with metal pipe inside. Those fail at the storm collar, not the brick.
Sometimes the honest answer is abandonment. Power-vent the water heater. Drop the stack below the roofline.
Same-day service available in Des Plaines, IL. Call to check availability.
Call (847) 238-9426Frequently Asked Questions
My chimney is the old one that served the furnace and the fireplace. Is it worth repairing, or should I just line it?
That depends on what we find inside. A lot of Des Plaines houses from the 1920s-40s near downtown and the river, plus the 1950s-60s ranches, have one masonry stack built for a fireplace and a gravity furnace. Once a high-efficiency furnace went in and vented out the side wall, that flue was left orphaned and too big for whatever is still attached to it. If the tile is intact and the only issue is size and draft, a properly sized liner for the remaining appliance usually solves it and the masonry stays. If the clay tiles are already spalling and flaking from years of condensation, patching is throwing money at it. That chimney needs relining or rebuilding from the damaged course up. We sweep and inspect first, show you what the camera sees, and tell you which situation you're in rather than guessing from the roof.
What usually goes wrong with chimneys around here?
A few things come up over and over in Des Plaines. First, the oversized orphaned flue: flue gases cool before they reach the top, condense inside, and eat the tile and mortar joints from within. Second, damp at the base. In the sections near the Des Plaines River floodplain, basements stay humid and the bottom of the chimney and the cleanout stay wet, which rusts out dampers and connectors and leaves a musty smell that comes into the house. Third, crown and top-course deterioration on the older brick stacks, where freeze-thaw has opened the mortar and water is getting in from above. Often two of those are happening at once, because moisture from the top and moisture from the basement meet in the middle.
How fast can you get out here?
For a standard sweep and inspection, we're normally scheduling Des Plaines within a few days outside the fall rush. From roughly September through the first cold snap, the calendar fills and it stretches out, so if you want it done before you light the first fire, call early rather than in November. If you're smelling smoke in the house, seeing staining, or your furnace tech red-tagged a vent connection, say that when you call. We move those ahead of routine cleanings.
Can you do it the same day I call?
Sometimes, yes. Cancellations happen and we try to fill them with nearby work, and since Des Plaines is a compact area we can often shift a crew without losing half a day to driving. Same-day is realistic for an unsafe condition: no draft, active backdrafting, water pouring down the firebox. For a routine annual sweep it's better to book a slot than to hope one opens up.
What makes one Des Plaines chimney cost more than another to sweep and service?
The number moves with what's actually on the stack. A straightforward fireplace flue on a 1950s ranch, swept annually, is at the simple end. It climbs when there's a second flue in the same chimney, when the old furnace flue has to be evaluated and camera-scanned because of the orphaned-flue situation, or when years of condensation have left glazed, crusted deposits instead of loose soot. Damp chimney bases in the floodplain sections add time too, since wet soot doesn't brush out the way dry does. Condo and apartment buildings vary with roof access and how many flues share the stack. We look at the chimney before we commit to a number, so you're not told one thing on the phone and another on the roof.