Had a flue fire call in an old farmhouse last Tuesday that shook me up a bit

I was out at a place near Lancaster County, an old stone farmhouse built in the 1800s, and the homeowner said they hadn't swept the chimney in over a decade. When I got up on the roof I saw the creosote was almost an inch thick in places, and the liner was cracked from a small fire they didn't even notice. Has anyone else run into folks who just don't think about their chimneys until something bad happens?

2 comments

2 Comments

lily57415d ago

Good point, I used to think gas logs were basically maintenance free too. Then a neighbor's almost identical setup had a small fire start in the flue last winter and I saw how fast it went bad. That was enough to get me scheduling annual cleanings from then on.

avery_walker3015d ago

My buddy Mike had a chimney fire in his 1940s bungalow three winters back, and he said the whole thing sounded like a freight train going through his living room. He’d lived there for eight years and never once thought about having it swept because it was gas logs, not wood. Now he tells everyone he meets to get a cleanout at least every couple of years, no matter what you burn.