Chimney Sweeping

What Actually Comes Out of a White Mountains Flue

Creosote is not one substance. First stage is flaky soot that brushes off. Second stage is crunchy and layered. Third stage is a hard black glaze that has run down the flue wall like tar and set - and that is the one that carries a chimney fire.

Which one you get is decided by how the appliance is run, not how much wood goes through it. A stove burning steadily at temperature keeps the flue hot and the deposits light. A stove lit for a weekend and left to go out, in a cabin nobody heats the rest of the week, runs the flue cool and wet on every cycle and lays down the glaze. That is why the worst flues we open in this county are not in the houses that burn the most wood. They are in the cabins that burn occasionally.

There is a second thing that goes up a chimney here and it is not creosote. Ponderosa drops needles and cones continuously, and an open or badly capped flue under a canopy collects them all summer. We pull handfuls out most weeks in September. That is a blockage and a fire load sitting directly above a firebox somebody is about to light.

What's Included

• Full flue swept to the liner, from the roof or from below as the system requires
• Firebox, smoke shelf and damper cleaned out
• Level 1 inspection of the accessible system, findings written down
• Photographs of anything we flag, taken the same day and handed over
• Drop cloths over the hearth and floor, HEPA vacuum running throughout

Masonry, Class-A and Pellet Are Three Different Jobs

Around Show Low and Snowflake you get stone and brick with clay tile, where the questions are crown condition, mortar joints and whether the tiles have shifted. Up in Pinetop and Lakeside the cabins mostly vent through stainless class-A insulated pipe - no masonry to fail, but joints work loose, storm collars perish and the inner wall can corrode where an appliance runs cool.

Pellet appliances are their own category and get treated as such. They vent through small diameter pipe, often horizontally through a wall, and what accumulates is fine grey fly ash rather than creosote. It does not burn the way creosote does, but it blocks the vent and blinds the exhaust blower, and a blocked pellet vent shuts the stove down in January. Pellet vent work belongs with stove service as much as with sweeping, and we usually do the two together.

When to Book

September and October are the busy weeks and they fill first. If the appliance is your main heat, book before the first cold snap. Cabins and weekend places are better done in the shoulder season, while the roads are dry and there is still time to fix what turns up.

Chimney sweeping by town