Your chimney is more complicated than you might realize. It’s not just a concrete hole in the wall
with a chimney attached. Instead, it’s made up of a few different components, such as the
damper, smoke chamber, flue, and chimney cap. Some fireplaces also have an ash pit that
collects embers below the grate.
Over time, these interior chambers collect a film of soot and a chemical substance called
creosote, the concentrated tar residue emitted from wood smoke. Because these emissions do
not dissipate naturally, they must be manually removed from the interior surfaces of your
fireplace.
Here’s the process:
– A trained technician will first inspect your chimney. The first thing our technicians will do
is take a look inside your fireplace. What we want to do is make sure that there’s nothing
obstructing the flue and that all parts of your fireplace, especially moving mechanisms
like the damper, are functioning normally.
– Then, we prepare your living space for cleaning. Once it’s been determined that no
repairs are required before the cleaning, we’ll cover the fireplace with a plastic film and
make sure it’s sealed well. This will prevent ash and soot from being blown into your
living space. If there’s a lot of soot, we may place a vacuum hose under the film to aid in
the extraction of soot as we work.
– It’s time to get on the roof. Chimney cleaning is done from above with a specialized tool
that you’ve probably seen before: a metal brush with a long handle. This will effectively
scrape the creosote from the walls of your flue. Our technician will also remove, inspect,
and clean the chimney cap.
– Finally, we’ll clean out the debris in the firebox and ash pit. Once we’ve done our job in
the flue, it’s time to finish the clean-up below. We’ll remove all remaining debris in the
firebox and clean out the ash pit if you have one.

The whole process takes about an hour unless we’ve detected damage in your chimney.