Chimney Sweep in Northfield, IL

Frequently Asked Questions

1. We only burn a few fires a winter — does our chimney really need sweeping every year?

   The sweeping part may be light, yes. A Northfield fireplace that sees a handful of fires over the holidays won't build the creosote load a daily-burn house does. But the annual visit isn't mainly about soot here. It's about what the chimney does standing outside all year under heavy tree cover: leaves and needles packing the smoke shelf and cap screen, a limb that knocked the cap loose in a summer storm, and water getting into the crown. Most of what we find on these intermittent-burn homes is weather and wildlife damage, not buildup. If you skip years, that's usually what catches up with you.

2. Something is moving around in our chimney — can you deal with that?

   This is one of the most common calls we get in Northfield, especially on houses backing toward the lagoons and the wooded lots through the village. Squirrels and raccoons go into uncapped or damaged flues, and raccoons in particular will den there in spring. We don't remove live animals ourselves — that's a wildlife control job, and trying to smoke them out or close the damper on them goes badly. Once the flue is clear, we handle our side: cleaning out the nesting material and droppings, inspecting the liner for damage, and fitting a proper cap with a screen and animal guard so it doesn't happen again. A lot of the older masonry chimneys here were built with no cap at all, or with a thin one that a falling limb has already crushed.

3. What usually turns up on an inspection of a mid-century chimney here?

   Crown and mortar damage, more than anything. Most Northfield houses are ranches and splits from that mid-century run with exterior brick chimneys on the outside wall, and an exterior chimney takes the full freeze-thaw cycle on all four sides with no help from the house. The concrete crown at the top cracks, water gets down into the brickwork, and then it freezes and works the joints loose. You'll see it as spalling brick near the top, a crown you can fit a fingernail into, or staining on the chimney face. Second most common is the cap: leaf and limb strikes from the mature trees knock caps crooked or off entirely. On the custom rebuilds and additions we sometimes find flashing done poorly where the newer roofline meets older masonry.

4. We converted to a gas insert years ago. Is there anything to sweep?

   There's not much soot, but there is still work to do, and gas conversions in Northfield are common enough that we see the same issues repeatedly. When an insert goes into an old masonry fireplace, it should have a properly sized liner running to the top. Plenty of the conversions we find were done without one, or with a liner that's since come apart at a joint. Gas also produces a lot of moisture in the exhaust, and in an unlined or oversized old flue that condensation sits against the brick and chews up the mortar from the inside. We check the liner and its termination, the cap, the clearances, and look for any blockage at the top — a gas appliance will keep running with a blocked flue, which is the part that makes it worth checking.

5. How fast can you get out here, and is same-day possible?

   Northfield is a small village and we're in this part of the North Shore regularly, so scheduling is usually a matter of days rather than weeks for most of the year. The exception is roughly October into early December, when everyone decides at once that they want a fire for the holidays — that stretch books out, and if you want to burn over Thanksgiving or Christmas, call before the leaves are down. Same-day does happen, usually when a route opens up or a job finishes early, and we prioritize it for genuine problems: smoke pushing into the room, an animal audibly in the flue, water running down the firebox, or visible damage after a storm dropped a limb. For a routine annual sweep, plan ahead instead and book for a slower month.