Category: Chimney Care

Tips on How to Choose a Chimney Repair Contractor

Tips on How to Choose a Chimney Repair Contractor

There are approaches to protect yourself and settle on an educated choice. These tips will ensure that you wind up with a trustworthy chimney repair contractor and pay a reasonable cost for the work done.

We as a whole have known about the news stories about rascals who trick mortgage holders out of deposits for terrible work, non-existent work or notwithstanding for work that never should have been started. The Chimney Sweep business is a prime domain for these con-artists to work. Since numerous clueless purchasers are not taught about chimneys, stoves, warming machines and their smokestacks or venting frameworks they are regularly deceived by these hoodlums. A large portion of these operations begin with a telephone call offering uncommon low costs. When they are at your home, they may propose repairs that are required or security issues that should be tended to.

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Protect Your Home

The best possible operation and upkeep of your smokestack, stove or heater frameworks are of outrageous significance. Taking risks by procuring a chimney repair contractor in light of value alone can spell genuine inconvenience for your home and your wallet. The “savings” you may understand, will dissipate rapidly if the work is never done or not done up to industry models. When settling on a Chimney repair contractor picking a respectable and very much qualified organization will guarantee the most secure answer for ensuring your home and family. Try not to take risks with this critical choice.

Don’t Hire in light of a Chimney Sweep Solicitation

Leave con artists speechless, telephone specialists that guarantee low costs for fireplace services ought to be disregarded. Do your exploration on the web and ask these questions when you call your decisions.

Make Sure Your Chimney Sweep Company is Insured

Try not to be reluctant to inquire as to whether the Chimney Sweep Company has protection that would ensure against harm that may happen in your home, or to representatives that are working at your home. Discover precisely what their insurance covers, making inquiries can help to avoid hazards. On the off chance that the chimney repair contractor has no scope and gets harmed or harms your home you will assume the risk.

Insist on an Appointment Time Window

No one wants to stick around throughout the day for a temporary worker to arrive late. When making your arrangement the Chimney Sweep you pick ought to have the capacity to give you a window of a couple of hours in which the professional will arrive. On the off chance that the temporary worker you are meeting is uncertain when they will arrive or not certain they will arrive at all, it is then time to find a different, more reliable company.

Ask For Current References

Any legitimate Chimney Sweep organization ought to have the capacity to give names and telephone numbers of clients that are in your general region. Try not to delay making a snappy call to ensure the reference was satisfied with the organization. There are no reasons for not giving a reference when inquired.

Tips For Hiring A Qualified Masonry Contractor

Enlisting a Chimney repair contractor to do repairs on your smokestack done in your home in Knoxville, TN can be overwhelming undertaking. This is on the grounds that many individuals will claim to be Chimney repair contractors when you begin your hunt, yet not every one of them have what it takes and skill to take care of business right.

Hire the Right Chimney Repair Contractors

Hire the Right Chimney Repair Contractors

Regular chimney repair and maintenance is an essential maintenance step to keep your home safe. Your fireplace keeps you warm in the winter, but without your chimney, there wouldn’t be a way for the fire and harmful gases to stay in your fireplace only. With winter approaching, now is the perfect time to have your chimney inspected and repaired before you use it this winter. But how will you find a chimney repaired contractor in Knoxville, TN that will value your chimney safety as much as you do?

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Choosing a Chimney Sweep

Despite the importance of chimney safety, there’s a large amount of chimney sweeps out there who aren’t capable of helping you keep your chimney safe. And unfortunately choosing the wrong chimney could end up costing you way more than just the money you wasted on a job poorly done. Even a small house fire could result in damage that costs way more than any chimney inspection ever would.

Doing a bit of research before hiring a Knoxville chimney sweep will help you choose a contractor you feel comfortable with, ensuring that you have the peace of mind you deserve after your annual chimney inspection.

Here are some helpful questions you could ask a chimney repair contractor before hiring them:

  • Certifications: While a certification isn’t a guarantee of good service, it shows that you’re working with a business that’s willing to invest in reassuring you that the job will be done well. Good certifications for chimney sweeps include registration with the CSIA or another established non-profit entity.
  • Experience: When you hire a chimney repair contractor that’s been in business for a few years, you’re more likely to get what you pay for. Businesses that don’t deliver a good service often disappear as fast as arrive on the scene.
  • Insurance: Ask any chimney repair contractor you’re considering hiring whether they have any liability insurance to protect your home and belongings in case of an accident.

Even after asking all the most important questions, it’s still important that you choose a business you feel comfortable with. Don’t feel pressured into choosing a business if you don’t feel like they truly care about your best interests. Chimney safety is about keeping your home and family safe, and a contractor that cares about delivering good service will understand that you want to hire someone who realizes the importance of chimney safety.

How Important Is Certifications?

As mentioned before, certification is a good sign of a professional chimney contractor. In many cases, this certification also indicates that the business is concerned with ongoing education to keep up with the latest news in fire safety and chimney repairs. However, there are also certified chimney sweeps who care more about getting certifications to make you feel a false sense of trust, even though they don’t care about delivering good service to their customers. In this case, you might feel like you can rely on the certification, only to end up with a chimney that’s no safer after the inspection than before.

Because of this reviews and references should still be a step in choosing the right business to work with. You want to work with a business that has a reputation of doing the job properly. One that gives friendly service and cares about making your home safer.

So while certifications are certainly an important step in choosing a chimney sweep, as a customer, you deserve to ask more questions and do more research before choosing a company to work with. Standards for getting certified with any specific entity aren’t always high enough, making it too easy for chimney sweeps to obtain certifications. This is usually the case when the organization that offers a certification is more concerned about making it easy for businesses to get the certification rather than being concerned about your best interests as a homeowner.

The most well-known and trusted organization regulating chimney safety in the US is the Chimney Safety Institute of America. However, after certification, the CSIA has little control over how chimney contractors run their businesses, and so they encourage customers to report any gross misconduct from accredited business.

If the chimney sweep business is registered with the Better Business Bureau, the CSIA encourages customers to check if there are any unresolved complaints. Checking a business’s online reviews and social media can also help you to see how the business responds to negative feedback in the case of disagreements.

Chimney Sweeps West: Chimney Repair Contractors in Knoxville

If you would like to hire a chimney professional before the winter is here, feel free to call Chimney Sweeps West. At Chimney Sweeps West, we understand that your safety comes first. Our passion is helping to keep you safe, and so meeting customers who care about chimney safety brings us joy, as we know these people understand the importance of regular chimney maintenance. This helps us build long-lasting, mutually beneficial business relationships with homeowners who like to stay safe.

Why Your Chimney Might Smell Badly This Summer

Why Your Chimney Might Smell Badly This Summer

If visitors somehow managed to stroll into your home right now, what’s the main thing you think they’d take note of? Maybe the scent radiating from your chimney was what crossed your mind; if so, don’t panic. This is a typical event for some property holders, one that is particularly predominant amid the hotter summer months. The uplifting news is help is close at hand. The experts from Chimney Sweeps West are here to help you.

Why Does My Chimney Smell So Bad?

The appropriate response here is a truly direct one: creosote. If you happened to depended intensely on your chimney this past winter and maybe utilized more wood than you’d at first arranged (some of which would not have been properly prepared), creosote could have buildup on the inward walls of your fireplace’s chimney. These deposits, when joined with the additional water in the air that is noticeable all around this season of year, can emanate a completely disagreeable fragrance. Perhaps you’ve been thinking about whether you’re the main individual who needs to manage this issue, we hope you can discover some comfort in realizing this is a typical occurrence that chimney clients have been managing for quite a long time! It’s part of the long term care that goes into your chimney.

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How Do I Rid My Home of These Smells?

Creosote odors tend to linger. They saturate your smokestack’s permeable stone work and never seem to dissipate. In any case, you can try to treat the issue to help prevent yourself, your family, and your visitors from being driven out by the stench. The professional crew at Chimney Sweeps West can come out, investigate your chimney to guarantee that the main issue is the creosote, and clear out the deposits causing the odor. Having your chimney cleaned every year is a flat out must on the off chance that you intend to make full utilization of your chimney when the climate turns icy!

An Additional Consideration for You

Perhaps you’ve had your fireplace legitimately cleaned and yet have found scents every now and then, you could likewise be having a draft issue. The dominant part of older fireplaces were built with throat-mount dampers. Their metal-on-metal construction is their downfall with regards to keeping the odor inside the fireplace. Since they can’t be completely closed when the chimney is not being used, some scent can be smelled through the opening (regardless of how little it might show up) as outside air is constrained down your smokestack. Since there’s no fire going in the chimney to make an updraft, the air has an easier time moving into your home.

As should be obvious, chimney clients around the globe battle with rancid smokestacks, particularly amid the summer months. The professionals here at Chimney Sweeps West are here to help moderate this issue (and in addition whatever other issues you may have) for you. We urge you to get in touch with us at your soonest accommodation to plan an appointment so you can come back to making the most of your scent free living space.

What’s Causing My Chimney Odor?

Having a nasty smell coming from your chimney is NOT something you want to wake up to on a warm summer day. Even when you aren’t using it, your chimney can cause your house to smell. The main culprit is usually creosote buildup, but there are a few things to consider when it comes to foul chimney odors.

Different Types of Chimney Odor

Most chimney odor simply smells a bit like smoke. That’s because the smoke leaving your chimney causes buildup of creosote and soot over time. This residue will have a tendency to buildup faster if you use woods in your chimney that don’t burn as well.

To delay creosote buildup in your chimney, it’s always best to stick to well-seasoned hard woods. But even when using the right kinds of firewood, your chimney will still need a cleaning from time to time.

Apart from creosote and soot buildup, however, there are things that can cause your chimney to smell bad. And in some cases it won’t smell like smoke at all.

Cases where your chimney might smell bad for reasons other than creosote buildup include:

  • Mold: This isn’t a problem that should normally be present in chimneys, but if your chimney smells moldy, it might be because you have a roof leak. The wetness of the leak creates the perfect conditions for mold to grow in your chimney. This problem can be fixed by having your roof checked. Only once the leak is fixed, have your chimney cleaned. After all, there’s no use in cleaning your chimney without fixing the underlying problem first.
  • Animals: There are precautions you can take to keep animals out of your chimney. However, homeowners often don’t realize how easily animals try to get into the home through a chimney. Birds also like to make their nests there. If the smell coming from your chimney smells more like animal scats, there’s a good chance you’ve got guests. Unfortunately, animals also get stuck in the chimney occasionally, meaning that if your chimney smells like something died in there, that might very well be the case.
  • Debris: Once again, there are ways to keep leaves and other debris from entering your chimney, but many homeowners don’t know about this. Once again, this can smell moldy, rotten or perhaps even as if an animal died in your chimney.

Those are the main chimney odor problems you can expect that don’t have anything to do with creosote buildup. However, by keeping your chimney safer, even these problems can be eliminated.

It’s worthwhile to mention that keeping your chimney as dry as possible can go a long way in preventing bad odors. Anything from debris to creosote will smell worse if it gets wet.

The best way to fix your chimney odor problems is by first identifying the cause. You can do this by calling a professional chimney sweep to do an inspection. Here at Chimney Sweeps West, we have many years of experience in helping our customers fix and prevent chimney problems, so be sure to call us if you’re in Knoxville and you need help with your chimney.

How to Prevent Chimney Odor

Preventing chimney odor is actually surprisingly easy. One of the first things you can do to prevent bad odors from entering your home through your fireplace is to ensure that your chimney stays clean. You can do this by having you chimney cleaned and inspected once a year, preferably before winter so you know that it’s safe to use before making a fire.

Apart from this, you should do your best to keep debris and animals out of your chimney. Anything that gets into your chimney is not only likely to cause bad chimney odors, it’s also a fire hazard. Debris or bird’s nests in your chimney can light on fire easily, causing a problem that’s way worse than just a foul smell.

To prevent anything from getting into your chimney, you should have a proper chimney cap installed. The chimney cap will prevent some debris from getting into your chimney, but more importantly, it’s meant to keep water out. Keeping water out of your chimney will help so that any creosote buildup that might be present doesn’t get wet. This helps mainly because creosote smells worse when it’s wet. Apart from that, the cap will help keep water out to prevent mold from growing in your chimney.

To keep animals out, you should go for a chimney cap with a net.

What if My Chimney Still Smells?

Your chimney might smell because of drafts coming into your home through the chimney. Ideally, air should actually move out of your home through the chimney rather than entering your home. But sometimes the drafts don’t flow right, causing air to enter your home through the chimney.

Keeping the windows open might help for this problem somewhat. Other than that, having your chimney cleaned regularly can help a lot for this problem too.

If you recently repainted your burning stove, allowing the fireplace to burn for short intervals of time while keeping the windows open can help with chimney odors. Freshly painted or polished burning stoves have a tendency to smell rather bad for a while after being repainted, which might be another cause of foul odors from your fireplace.

Diagnosing Chimney Odors

With a hotter climate in the forecast, your chimney is most likely one of the last things at the forefront of your thoughts at the present time. In any case, the warmth and dampness of summer can make certain things inside your smokestack discharge strong and unsavory scents, which can wind up inside your home through the chimney.

Tips to Summer Home Maintenance

The mid year months have arrived. To benefit as much as possible from your late spring and facilitate the weight of home support and repair, here are 10 hints to keeping your home fit as a fiddle.

Heater and Air Conditioner Maintenance – With the change of the season, you should change your air channel and consider getting a tune-up for summer. There is nothing more terrible at that point going into the mid year months and having the A/C go out. Have it looked at now and to spare you bother later.

Smoke Detector – Make beyond any doubt you test your smoke and carbon monoxide finder and change the battery. In the event that your identifier is more seasoned than 10 years, it’s an ideal opportunity to supplant it.

Chimney Cleaning – Although you won’t be utilizing your chimney again until the fall, now is the ideal time to get it cleared and cleaned. This season of year is less occupied for the smokestack clear organizations, so you can complete it and have it prepared to pass when the leaves begin to fall.

Roof Fans – Mostly likely you’re roof fans have been icon over the winter months or it’s a great opportunity to invert the course. Pause for a moment and examine the fan, clean up the cutting edges and ensure they are adjusted.

Cleaning Gutters and Downspouts – While the climate is pleasant and warm, now would be an incredible time to get out your drains and downspouts. It’s suggest that canals get got out once every year and twice per year if there are a considerable measure of overhanging trees.

Outside Caulking – Take the opportunity to completely review the caulking around your windows and entryways. Bugs and ants are pulled in to the kitchen territory, by adding crisp caulking to the entryways and windows, this will help keep those little gatecrashers.

Power Washing – Your siding, walkways and decks require a decent scour this season of year. Consider weight washing them for unrivaled appearance and additionally keeping up them for ideal utilize.

Pool Maintenance – Depending where you live, your pool presumably hasn’t been utilized since a year ago. Scour the dividers of the pool and also leveling out the water and include the important chemicals. Cleaning your pool takes time, however the advantages of swimming all late spring will be well justified, despite all the trouble.

Outside Paint Touch-up – Now is an ideal opportunity to go outside and touch-up the outside paint. On the off chance that you don’t have the paint shading for your touch-up, take a photo and go to your paint store to have them coordinate the photograph. Or, on the other hand in some cases, the paint store may convey a rep that can coordinate the paint for you.

Need help getting your summer projects done? Call us here at Chimney Sweeps West, we can help you with more than just your chimney.

Issues Damp Chimneys Can Cause in Your Home

There’s nothing like a crackling chimney on a frosty winter night to unite the family and remove the chill. Also, there’s nothing like smokestack issues, which are sadly very normal, to disrupt a life and lead to potentially big damage and expenses down the line. One chimney problem that shows up a lot is dampness. Here’s what you need to know about it.

What are pieces of information that you have a damp chimney?

Signs that you may have (or soon will have) a moisture issue with your chimney include a leaky attic or roof in the general area of the chimney, and/or a flue that has water running down it. Issues like this won’t leave all on their own and must be tended to at the earliest opportunity.

Remember that overabundant dampness in a fireplace doesn’t simply “happen.” There’s an explanation behind it, regardless of the possibility that you’re not mindful of it. A broke fireplace crown, for instance, can let in rain water. This is a genuinely basic event in more established homes worked before the 1980s, yet even more up to date homes are inclined to this issue, especially if the smokestack and chimney framework have gone years without standard, careful examination by professionals prepared in this teach.

Chimneys operated without a secure, properly functioning chimney cap, which is designed to block water from rain and melting snow, also will lead to trouble. Protective flashing around the chimney that’s deteriorated with age is yet another way for moisture to get into the chimney.

Be proactive and settle the issue quick

Since water and dampness are ruinous powers to smokestacks, it’s imperative to distinguish the reason for the issue at the earliest opportunity. You might have the capacity to do this without anyone’s help, or you may require the guide of an expert fireplace clear. In any case, it should be finished. Gotten early, smokestack dampness issues frequently are fixable without unreasonable cost. Permitted to advance, the cost of repair or finish modify can be high.

More imperative than cost of repairing a smokestack is the security of the general population who live in your home. The greater part of house flames originate from issues with chimneys and smokestacks. At the point when a smokestack liner or the blocks and mortar utilized as a part of the stack’s development are bargained, extreme warmth effortlessly can achieve neighboring building materials that are not planned to be fireproof. The outcome isn’t something anybody needs to understanding.

Get Your Chimney Waterproofed

Like any other part of your home, your chimney needs care every once in a while. Many homeowners don’t give their chimney much thought. They just allow it to deteriorate and accumulate dirt. But eventually this kind of neglect can prove to be a serious health hazard. Your chimney can get damaged in a variety of ways – one of the more common ways being cracks in the chimney. But you should also have your chimney checked for water damage. As water damage can be very harmful to your chimney.

How Can Water Damage Your Chimney?

If your chimney isn’t properly waterproofed, it won’t be safe to use. Water damage can cause a lot of problems with your chimney. That’s because large parts of your chimney are made from materials like steel, which will rust if it’s exposed to water.

If you never have your chimney inspected, now would be a great time to get in touch with a local chimney sweep service. Professional chimney sweeps will be able to check for any water damage in your chimney. If there’s damage, it’s always best to locate the source of the problem and have it fixed. Once you’ve fixed the source of the problem, you can have your chimney fixed without having to worry about your fixed chimney getting damaged again by the same source of water damage.

Water damage to your chimney can cause your damper to rust, as well as potentially causing problems with water penetration in your walls. If that’s the case, you might even see mold grow on your walls near the fireplace, and the wallpaper of paint might lift because of the dampness in the wall.

Mold in your house is terrible for your health, so it’s always best to have any problems fixed that can cause your walls to rot.

Mold and Your Health

Mold is primarily linked to respiratory problems. So if you or one of your loved ones suffer from asthma, or if you tend to have other problems, like coughs, wheezing or a stuffy nose, mold is a likely culprit in your home.

For people who are more allergic to it, mold can also cause skin problems like rashes. Needless to say, the health problems associated with mold in your home is no fun.

To prevent mold from growing in your home, you should have any leaks – like roof leaks or broken pipes fixed as soon as possible. If your chimney is the problem, then you’ll be able to fix the problem by calling a chimney sweep and having your chimney fixed.

It’s important that you have any leaks fixed as soon as possible, as leaving them could cause your walls to get soaked, leading to more water damage than if you had the problem fixed soon after it was discovered. Once you walls, chimney and roof have water damage, the wet parts (or the badly rusted bits) will all have to be replaced. You can’t leave any area of your walls wet and hope that it will dry out, as you’re leaving a potential breeding ground for more mold to grow. And once the mold starts to grow again, it can be very difficult to control.

Things you can do to prevent mold from growing in your home include:

  • Keeping humidity levels low.
  • Thoroughly drying out any areas, like carpets, after they got wet.
  • Properly ventilating areas that are often humid, like the shower and the area above the stove or kettle in your kitchen.

The health problems associated with mold might seem insignificant to you, but mold-related allergies shouldn’t be taken lightly. Your respiratory system is a vital part of your health, and chronic exposure to mold can take its toll on your health.

Apart from this, your house is likely to smell damp and unpleasant if you leave water damaged areas without fixing them promptly.

Staying Safe Next Winter

Let’s face it, you don’t want to think about winter yet. It feels like things are only just starting to heat up, so why worry about the winter? There’s still a lot of time before then.

Fact is, springtime is great for getting your chimney inspected before winter this year. That’s because it’s the ideal season to do all kinds of outdoor maintenance tasks. The temperature isn’t too extreme, which often helps for certain parts of the maintenance work.

Getting your chimney inspected in spring also allows a lot of time before winter, so if there are still problems after your chimney is fixed, there will be time to get your chimney ready before winter.

Remember to use a chimney cap to avoid water damage through your chimney. Chimney caps are also great for preventing birds from making nests in your chimney. This is very important because the nests can actually catch fire whenever you use your chimney, and this can lead to a chimney fire.

Apart from this, you should have your chimney inspected annually to see that it’s still ready for each coming winter. Chimney inspections from professional sweeps aren’t cheap, but your chimney has a very important role to play in keeping your house safe. Without the proper care, it’s better to refrain from using your chimney, as you can never be too safe when working with any area in your house that uses fire.

Why Spring is the Best Time to Get Your Chimney Repaired

Finally, things are heating up again! Now that the weather is improving, it’s a great time to think about maintenance tasks that need to be done before things start cooling down nearing the end of the year once more. Your fireplace worked hard all winter long, so one of the maintenance tasks on your spring to-do list should definitely be a chimney inspection. Because of the lovely weather conditions in spring, it’s one of the best times to get an exterior chimney inspection.

The Best Time to Sweep Your Chimney?

In all honesty, there isn’t one single time of year that’s best for getting your chimney cleaned and inspected, but some seasons are better than others. Regardless of what time of the year it is, however, you should always have your chimney inspected as soon as possible if:

  • Your chimney hasn’t been inspected in more than a year. Annual inspections are recommended, as it’s best to have your chimney inspected after every winter to insure it’s still in good shape.
  • You just moved into a new house. When you just moved into a new place, there’s no way to tell for sure whether or not the previous home owners took well care of their fireplace and chimney.
  • You notice any potential problems. If you notice smoke leaking into your house when you use your fireplace, or if your chimney seems to have cracks, it’s time to have it checked out.

To be safe, you should have carbon monoxide sensors installed in your house. Carbon monoxide is an invisible, odorless gas that happens to be reasonably similar to carbon dioxide in chemical structure. But while carbon dioxide is naturally abundant in the atmosphere, breathing in carbon monoxide can be fatal.

This is because your red blood cells have to ability to chemically bond with oxygen (O), carbon dioxide (CO2) and carbon monoxide (CO). But while bonding with oxygen and carbon dioxide helps your red blood cells transport oxygen throughout your body, bonding with carbon monoxide actually does the opposite. When your red blood cells bond with carbon monoxide, you effectively suffocate, as your body will no longer be getting the oxygen it needs.

Here’s the catch, though. It won’t feel like you’re suffocating. The primary symptoms of carbon monoxide poisoning through inhalation are simply feeling light headed, dizzy, or tired. People who die of carbon monoxide poisoning often just fall asleep to never wake up again.

If you often feel more light headed or tired when you’re in the same room as your fireplace, your fireplace might be leaking CO into your home. The best way to know for certain that your fireplace is safe is to install CO sensors, because humans can’t smell, see or detect CO without the proper technology to do so. But having your chimney inspected, cleaned and repaired regularly should significantly reduce the risk of CO leaking into your house through the fireplace.

Unfortunately, many people aren’t aware of the dangers of CO poisoning, making it a silent killer.

The Best Season for Chimney Inspections

As stated above, when it comes to chimney inspections, it’s always better to play on the safe side. That said, for practical reasons, some seasons tend to be better for chimney inspections than others.

Spring and summer are perfect for chimney inspections. During these warm seasons, it’s easier to fix any problems that a professional chimney sweep might identify.

For instance, your chimney might be getting water damage from a roof leak. Before you can have your chimney fixed, you should have your roof repaired to avoid future water damage to your chimney. However, winter (or any particularly cold time of the year) isn’t the ideal time to work on your roof.

If you wait till winter for a chimney inspection, you might learn that your chimney isn’t safe to use, but that the work required to fix it should preferably wait till spring.

This will mean that you’ll have to go through winter without using your fireplace, which will probably a bit chilly. Winter is generally less pleasant than springtime and summertime, so not even having the opportunity to snuggle up in front of your fireplace with hot chocolate or a book seems rather dreadful.

But when it comes to the safety of your chimney, you can’t really take any chances. Using your fireplace when your chimney unsafe can literally cause you to burn down your house. While you can try other heating alternatives, you can’t replace your house once it’s burned down, so be sure to be safe rather than sorry. If your chimney is unfit, don’t use your fireplace before your haven’t fixed it.

Where to Find a Chimney Sweep?

Don’t neglect having your chimney inspected by a professional. While you can attempt to clean your own chimney, professional chimney sweeps are specially trained and know what to look for during inspections. So while there’s nothing wrong with cleaning your own chimney on a regular basis (assuming you know how to), you should still have it inspected annually by a chimney professional.

Chimney inspections are important, but unfortunately there are fake chimney sweeps who try to scam people. Most often, these people will require large upfront payments, but they’ll never even come back to look at your chimney.

Ask your chimney sweep about any special training they have. Many chimney sweeps are registered with the Chimney Safety Institute of America, or other official organizations that regulate chimney safety in the US.

But as long as the company sweeping your chimney is a real business, you probably won’t be scammed, so avoid hiring a chimney sweep who doesn’t work for a business that seems real. An online presence, or brick and mortar location both indicate that you’re working with real professionals.

Not sure where to find chimney sweeps in Knoxville, TN? Feel free to book an inspection with Chimney Sweeps West.