Chimney repair across the north metro.

We work the north metro on set days

Blaine, Coon Rapids, Andover, Ham Lake, Lino Lakes and the towns around them. Grouping the work by area is how you get the same crew, the same written photo estimate, and a written number before anything starts. Call and ask when we're next in your town.

Two kinds of chimneys up here

The older towns, Fridley, New Brighton, Coon Rapids, Anoka, are brick stacks on their original mortar, and the crown and the joints above the roof are what go. The newer ones, Blaine, Andover, Ham Lake, Lino Lakes, have a lot of framed chases with a factory-built fireplace inside, and there it's the cover on top, the flashing and the flue. We fix both.

What 773 inspections showed us

Since 2022 we've completed 773 chimney inspections, and 328 of them turned up something that needed a repair estimate. That's about 42%. The rest didn't need one. When there is something, we photograph it and write it up so you can see it for yourself.

What the repair scopes name

We've written 418 repair scopes with full descriptions. The crown shows up in 225 of them. The flue, meaning cracked tiles or a liner, in 223. Rebuilding brick above the roof in 208. Flashing in 103, water getting in in 103, tuckpointing in 89 and the cap in 68. Most scopes name more than one, because a cracked crown lets water into the joints and the joints let it into the brick.

Brick and factory-built fail differently

On the 234 brick-chimney scopes, the crown came up in 189 and brick above the roof in 162. On the 84 that involved a factory-built fireplace, the flue or liner came up in 60. Brick fails from the top down. A factory-built system usually fails at the pipe and the parts that keep water off it.

How hard the winters are, town to town

We pulled ten winters of daily temperatures from the NOAA stations nearest our towns. A freeze-thaw day is one where the high goes above 32 and the low drops below it. The Minneapolis-St. Paul airport averages 70 of those a winter. Vadnais Lake, the station nearest Circle Pines, Lino Lakes and New Brighton, averages 74. Andover's station averages 92, the most of any we matched, and Elk River, Santiago and Cambridge land between 86 and 90.

What that means for your chimney

Every one of those days is another chance for water in a crack to freeze, swell and open it further. The farther north and west you go from the Cities, the more of those days you get and the more nights hit zero: 18 a winter at Vadnais Lake, 33 at Andover, 34 at Cambridge. The crown and the top few courses of brick take nearly all of it.

Town by town

• Blaine Brick on the older side of town, framed chases with metal covers in the subdivisions.
• Coon Rapids Ramblers and split-levels with brick chimneys, and old furnace flues left standing empty.
• Andover Mostly 80s, 90s and 2000s, brick and sided chases both reaching their first big repair.
• Ham Lake Big lots and tall roofs, so tall chimneys that take weather on every side.
• Lino Lakes & Centerville Mostly 90s and 2000s houses, about twenty-five years into their crowns and covers.
• Circle Pines & Lexington More 1950s houses than anywhere else up here, many with thin original crowns.
• Anoka & Ramsey Some of the county's oldest brick next to some of its newest chases.
• Elk River Old brick near downtown, 2000s subdivisions, and the one town where the census shows real wood heat.
• Spring Lake Park Small, and nearly four out of five houses went up before 1990.
• Mounds View Mostly the 50s through the 70s, with crowns that were poured thin.
• New Brighton Built in the 60s and 70s, right in the years when mortar gives out.
• Fridley Half the houses went up in the 50s and 60s.
• East Bethel & Oak Grove Acreage up Highway 65, with tall stacks on tall roofs.
• Big Lake, Becker & Monticello Mostly 90s and 2000s along Highway 10, with a small old core.
• Zimmerman & Princeton Princeton's pre-1940 brick next to Zimmerman's 2000s builds.
• Isanti & Cambridge Isanti's newest houses and Cambridge's older core, with the most zero-degree nights on our list.
• Forest Lake & Hugo Lake lots, 1970s brick in Forest Lake and 2000s houses in Hugo.