Chimney repair in Coon Rapids, MN

The mortar goes first, then the brick

A rambler from the 60s or 70s usually has a brick chimney carrying the fireplace, and a lot of the time the furnace flue runs up the same stack. The part above the roof gets soaked from every side and gets no heat from the house. The joints wash out, water gets in, it freezes, and the brick faces pop off. Once you can see missing faces or daylight through a joint, repointing won't save it, and the top has to come down and go back up.

The old furnace flue nobody thinks about

When the old furnace got swapped for one that vents out a plastic pipe through the wall, the brick flue it used to run up usually got left there empty. An empty flue never warms up, so it stays wet, and a wet chimney comes apart from the inside. If your furnace vents out the side of the house now, that old flue is worth a look.

Two flues, one stack

On a lot of ramblers and split-levels the fireplace and the furnace or water heater share one brick chimney, each with its own flue. They age differently. The fireplace flue gets hot a few times a year, the furnace flue ran every day for decades. When we inspect, each one gets its own look, because a good fireplace flue says nothing about the one next to it.

When the water heater changes too

The same thing happens when an old water heater gets swapped for one that vents out the side. The flue it shared with the furnace, or had to itself, is left open and empty. If you've changed either one in the last ten years and nobody touched the chimney, it's worth having it looked at.

Right under the coldest station up here

The NOAA station at Andover sits about 5 miles north of Coon Rapids. Across eight full winters it averaged 92 freeze-thaw days a year, more than any other station we pulled records for up here, and 33 nights at zero or below. First frost usually comes around October 10 and the last one around May 13, which is a long season for water to sit in a joint and freeze.

What that does to a rambler's chimney

A rambler chimney usually sticks up off a low roof, out in the open, and takes weather on all four sides. After forty or fifty years of ninety-some freeze-thaw days a winter, the mortar above the roof is the first thing to wash out. An empty old furnace flue makes it worse, because a flue that never warms up never dries out.

A long cold season means planning ahead

With the last freeze at the Andover station usually hanging on until the middle of May, mortar and concrete have a short window at both ends of the year. If your inspection turns up masonry work in the fall, we'll tell you straight whether it can be done right before the cold or whether it should be first in line in the spring.

Chimney inspection in Coon Rapids

We check the crown, the joints above the roof, the flashing, and every flue in the stack with a camera, including the old furnace flue if it's still there and empty. You get the pictures by email, and we'll tell you whether that empty flue should be capped and sealed, relined for something new, or taken down below the roofline.

Relining comes up a lot

Across all the repairs we've written up with a full scope, 418 of them, the flue or a new liner was part of 223. On brick chimneys alone it was 111 of 234. That's our work everywhere, not Coon Rapids in particular, but on a house where the flues have done fifty years of work, the inside of the chimney is worth a look.

Chimney sweep in Coon Rapids

If you've put a wood stove or an insert into an old fireplace, that flue works harder than it used to, and it needs looking at every year. The sweep comes with the inspection: anything over an eighth of an inch of buildup gets swept the same visit. We don't sweep blind. The inspection is how we know the sweep is enough.