Chimney upkeep suggestions from Capial Area consultants

A crackling fire in the fireplace sounds great this time of year. There is something that a wood fire lacks that a gas insert lacks: on the one hand, the crackling sound, along with the sight and smell of logs burning on the stove.

Before we break out the chestnuts, however, we should consider the maintenance required to keep a fireplace safe.

Andy Looker has been a chimney sweep for over 30 years. He and his wife, Jill Looker, run Clifton Park Chimney Maintenance. Andy learned the trade from his brother Pete, the founder of the State Chimney Sweepers Guild.

The capital region offers a lot of variety for a chimney sweep due to the age range of the housing. The lookers might be asked to service a two-sided brick fireplace built in recent years or step into a hearth installed more than a century ago.

If Dick Van Dyke singing “Chim Chim Cher-ee” from “Mary Poppins” immediately comes to mind when you hear “Chimney Sweep” please know the Lookers heard all of your jokes. Despite the soundstage choreography you see in the film, Sweeps don’t spend much time on the roof. Most of the time, their work can be done in the house.

There are two types of fireplaces (without wood stoves), Looker explained: brickwork and pre-fabricated metal. The latter is far more common, Looker says, because they’re safer and easy to install. The newer the house, the more likely it is that there is a precast metal part.

If you’re in the market and interested in a home with a fireplace, a chimney and fireplace inspection, separate from the regular home inspection, is important, according to Jill Looker. A certified chimney sweep examines the smoke vent (the pipe that carries smoke up and out of the chimney) for cracks with a camera. They also measure the distance from the inside of the smoke chamber to the outside of the facing brick. Less than 16 inches, says Andy Looker, is a sign that the heat is getting too close to combustible materials – like your mantelpiece.

In the case of a brick fireplace, not only the condition of the firebox and the flap must be taken into account, but also how well the fireplace is supported from below.

According to the Chimney Safety Institute of America, a chimney made of bricks, blocks, or stone and mortar can hold 6 or 7 tons. The job of a sweeper is not only to clean the chimney and chimney, but also to examine the supporting structure. Any shifting or setting down can cause the front stones to peel off and open a crack between the damper frame and the front stone. This can lead to a fire. In years of experience, Looker has seen the risk of fire increase when heating oil becomes more expensive and people put wood stoves in fireplaces to use the chimney – except that the facility was unsafe.

A fireplace can take longer between cleanings if the user burns oven-dried wood. It doesn’t just have to be hardwood – that’s a myth, Looker says, but it has to be dry. You can burn hardwood because it gives off more heat for longer than, say, pine, but it is also safe to burn.

A chimney will stay cleaner if the fire burning in the chimney heats up quickly to 300 degrees and burns for several hours to prevent creosote from forming. Creosote is a mixture of tar and soot. If you look up your chimney and see a lot of shiny things on the sides, that’s bad news, Looker says.

Another reason to rent a sweep before preparing for winter is to avoid roasting a living thing.

“One of my jobs is to get dead animals out of the chimney,” says Looker. “Fleas will live on a decaying raccoon, so I left jobs covered in fleas.” The songwriters didn’t take that into account when they wrote: “A ‘Sweep is as happy as luck can be, Chim Chiminey, Chim Chiminey, Chim Chim Cher-Oo.”

lhornbeck@timesunion.com • 518-454-5352 • @leighhornbeck