Our Services
Chimney repairs for homes in Markham
Your inspection costs nothing, and anything you book in the following 72 hours is 10% off.
The smoke chamber above the damper
Between the damper and the flue sits the smoke chamber, which funnels smoke upward into the flue. Code wants the inside of that chamber finished smooth with a coat of refractory mortar. Rough, stepped brick in that space slows the smoke and holds deposits, and cracks there let heat into the masonry behind. It is a part of the chimney homeowners rarely get to see.
We look into the smoke chamber with a light during every free inspection and tell you plainly whether the one in your Markham chimney needs work.
Chimneys finished in stucco
A stucco finish covers the masonry, which also means it can hide what is happening underneath. Fine cracks at the top of a stuccoed chimney, or where it meets the roof, can admit rain behind the coat, and a patch over wet material soon fails again. We sound the finish for hollow areas and look for staining before choosing between a surface repair and opening the coat to reach the damage.
Each step of a stucco repair in Markham appears on its own line of the written estimate.
Checking the chimney after high wind
Strong wind can lift a cap, bend a chase cover, loosen flashing or drop a branch onto the crown. The National Hurricane Center notes that a storm can keep hurricane-strength winds far from where it comes ashore, and under NFPA 211 an outside event that has likely harmed a chimney calls for a more thorough inspection. Damage at the top is easy to miss from the ground.
After a storm passes Markham, we check the chimney, and if the permanent repair has to wait, we can close the flue top with a temporary cover.
Covered at night, cleaned up every day
Repairs that run longer than a day never leave an open chimney exposed overnight. At the end of each work day we cover any opening we have made, so rain and animals stay out until we return. Loose mortar, old brick and packaging are cleaned up as we go and hauled away when the job is finished, rather than left in a pile beside the house.
It is how every repair runs at homes in Markham, from a single cap to a rebuilt top.
