Insuring Your Chimney Liner is Clean and Well Maintained

While true chimneys may be a 12th century European invention, the Romans were using tubes inside their walls to direct the smoke out of the building. These days, thanks to steel chimney liners, your chimneys are cleaner and more structurally sound. By maintaining your chimney liners and cleaning a chimney regularly, you will be able to prevent one of the 15,000 annual creosote fires. Whether you need to find a service for cleaning chimneys or replacement steel chimney liners, you can find the right chimney service with some initial research.

As part of your research, you may want to have your chimney evaluated to see if it is due for a cleaning. Cleaning a chimney is critical to preventing internal fires and structural issues from chimney fires. In fact, fires in a chimney that has not been properly cleaned can start burning at over 2,000 degrees. All parts of your chimney, including the chimney caps and steel chimney liners, need to be properly maintained, inspected and repaired annually to protect against unexpected fires, leaks, or other issues.

First, when looking at companies for cleaning your chimney, you want to research their expertise, past performance and client satisfaction. Cleaning the chimney requires specialized training and a certain level of insurance, that you should confirm before allowing anyone to climb on your roof or look at your chimney. You can begin your research with online reviews that feature client comments and feedback. Also, be sure to check with your friends, family and colleagues to see if they have used a local service for cleaning the chimney recently.

Since there is a little mystery to getting your chimney cleaned, you will have the most success from analyzing comments from previous customers. As part of any service, by getting multiple bids on each project, you will be able to select the best company using your research. If they are well reviewed and have client testimonials to back it up, you can feel better about hiring them.