Chimney repair in Lino Lakes & Centerville, MN

Twenty-five years is when the top gives up

Whichever kind of chimney you have, it fails in the same place. On brick it's the crown cracking and the joints opening. On a sided chase it's the metal at the top and the storm collar around the pipe. Either way, water that used to run off the top now runs down inside, and you don't see it until it gets to the ceiling.

We don't put back what failed

Crowns get poured with an overhang past the brick and a drip edge cut underneath, so the water drips clear instead of running down the face. On a chase, the cover goes back in stainless with a cross break so it sheds water. You do it once, not again in twenty years.

Why the stain isn't always next to the chimney

On a framed chase, water that gets in at the top can run down the flue pipe or along the framing and come out a few feet away, on a ceiling or at the top of a window. On brick it tends to show up right beside the chimney, where it meets the ceiling or the wall by the fireplace. Either way, we start at the top and follow the water down, so the fix goes where it's actually getting in.

Lino Lakes: houses built for families, and staying that way

Lino Lakes built 28% of its houses in the 1990s and 17% in the 2000s. 81% are single-family detached and 92% are lived in by their owners. If the fireplace has been burned most winters since the house went up, that's a long time for a liner nobody has ever put a camera on.

Centerville: small, and almost all one era

Centerville has about 1,466 homes, and 31% of them went up in the 1990s alone, with another 25% in the 1980s. 79% are single-family houses. If you're buying or selling one, the chimney is at the age where a home inspector's flashlight doesn't tell you much and a camera in the flue does.

The winters here, from the nearest station

The nearest NOAA station with a good record is at Vadnais Lake, about seven and a half miles from Lino Lakes and eight and a half from Centerville. Over the seven complete winters it recorded since 2015, it averaged 74 days a winter that thawed in the afternoon and froze at night, and about 18 nights at zero or colder. First freeze came around October 27 and the last around April 22.

What that does to a twenty-five-year-old top

74 freeze-thaw days a winter, for twenty-five winters, is almost two thousand times that water in the top of your chimney has frozen and pushed. On brick, that's what opens the crown. On a factory-built chimney, it's what dries out caulk and works flashing loose. The top of the chimney is where every one of those cycles hits first.

Chimney inspection in Lino Lakes and Centerville

On brick we check the crown, the joints above the roofline, the flashing and the clay flue tiles with a camera. On a factory-built fireplace in a sided chase we check the cover, the storm collar, the flashing and the siding at the base, and then the metal flue and liner from top to bottom. The furnace or water heater flue gets looked at too if it shares the chimney, and you get every picture by email.

What our records say

On the factory-built chimneys we've written repair scopes for, 60 of 84 included the liner. Flashing came up in 103 of 418 scopes overall, and water getting in somewhere in 103. The chase cover by itself came up in only 4 of 418. So when a chase is leaking, the cover is rarely the whole story, and that's why we look at all of it. These are our numbers from 773 inspections since 2022, across every town we've worked, not a Lino Lakes or Centerville count.

Chimney sweep in Lino Lakes and Centerville

The sweep comes with the inspection. We look at every flue first, and if one has more than an eighth of an inch of buildup, it gets swept that visit. On a factory-built fireplace, the inspection also tells you whether the metal flue sections are still tight and the liner is sound, which a brush never will.