Signs That Your Chimney For Fireplace Needs Cleaning or Repair

It’ll only be a matter of time until you light up the fireplace to keep the home warm in the winter months. You may not want to hire a chimney cleaning service from a fireplace installation in Peterborough. Even if you don’t need one, you still must get it serviced, so you don’t put your family and property in danger of a fire. Because you can’t see inside your chimney, whether you use it often or not, the symptoms that it needs to be cleaned aren’t always obvious.

Here are seven indicators that it’s time to clean your chimney or fireplace:

1. It smells like a flame in your fireplace. Even when the fireplace isn’t lit, the smell of burning wood permeates the entire room.
   
   
2. Fire burns unusually. It simply doesn’t burn as it used to when you start a fire in your fireplace.
   
   
3. It takes more work to start a fire and keep it burning. It’s more challenging to start a fire, which might be due to a blocked chimney impeding airflow. Fire needs oxygen to burn.
   
   
4. The room is filled with a dense blanket of smoke. Even with the chimney open, the room is filled with smoke.
   
   
5. The damper on the fireplace is black. A black drag indicates creosote accumulation. Creosote may take the form of a flaky, light soot buildup. It condenses into a complex, glossy material that adheres to surfaces in a tar-like manner as it progresses.
   
   
6. There are grease streaks on the fireplace walls. Another indicator of creosote is greasy stains on the walls of your fireplace.
   
   
7. There have been animal sightings. Signs of animal nests and animal sounds might be coming from your chimney (which can be tricky if the nest is inside the chimney). The most typical offenders for constructing houses in your chimney are birds and squirrels.

If you come across any of the warning indicators listed above, it’s time to schedule a fireplace and chimney cleaning. But what if you haven’t cleaned it in a long time and don’t detect any obvious evidence of contamination? How often you use the fireplace determines the frequency with which you should clean your chimney from a fireplace service in Peterborough.

When should your chimney be cleaned?
When it comes to leading organizations, there are two schools of thinking. When there is 1/8′′ of creosote and soot deposit within the chimney liner, the Chimney Safety Institute of Peterborough recommends cleaning your fireplace and chimney. Regardless of how frequently you use your chimney, the National Fire Protection Association (NFPA) recommends cleaning it yearly. For wood-burning fireplaces, we suggest cleaning the chimney once a year from our fireplace service in Peterborough. Some homeowners clean their ducts in the spring, but most do it immediately before the cold season to guarantee the chimney is free of nests and debris.

Cleaning a chimney or fireplace is a nasty job
Most homeowners employ chimney sweeps because cleaning fireplaces and chimneys are tedious and involve dirt. Cleaning a vent is not only a laborious job, but it’s also one that should be left to the professionals from our fireplace installation in Peterborough to guarantee it’s done correctly. Call Kawartha Eco Climate Control at (705) 868-8246 for all chimney-related services.