What We Do

Telling These Three Apart Before You Call

Most calls sort into three situations, and the useful thing is knowing which question you are actually asking.

If it has been a year and you burn wood, you want a sweep. It includes a Level 1 inspection at no extra charge, which is the point - you find out the condition of the flue as part of the same visit rather than paying separately to be told. What comes out matters more than how much: flaky soot is housekeeping, hard black glaze is a fire risk, and the difference is caused by how the appliance runs rather than by volume.

If the stove has never drafted properly, or creosote builds far faster than your burning explains, or pieces of clay tile turn up on the smoke shelf, that is relining territory - but it needs a camera before anyone quotes a number. Two causes dominate here. One is thermal fatigue, because these hills produce the fastest temperature swings recorded anywhere and clay tile does not survive them indefinitely. The other is not damage at all: an insert dropped into a fireplace flue four to six times wider than the appliance needs.

If smoke comes into the room, that is draft correction, and it is the one people most often pay to have guessed at. Four things break draft - the house is depressurised, the flue is the wrong size or height, an inversion has removed the density difference the chimney runs on, or something is blocked. Only two of those are the chimney. We sell the measurement first and separately, because a cap fitted to the wrong diagnosis is several hundred dollars that changes nothing.

If none of that describes it, tell us what the smoke or the water is doing and we will say which applies - or that none of them does.