Serving Minneapolis, St. Paul and the Surrounding Communities
As a homeowner, it’s essential to prioritize the safety and efficiency of your fireplace and chimney. These structures not only add warmth and ambiance to your home but also serve as critical components of your heating system. However, without regular maintenance, they can pose significant risks.
We strongly advocate for an annual fireplace and chimney inspection conducted by certified professionals. In this post, we’ll explore the reasons why these inspections are vital for every homeowner.
Have you ever wondered about the different components that make your fireplace not only a warm and cozy spot in your house, but also keep it working safely? One crucial element you should be aware of is the chimney flue.
The flue is an important part of any chimney inspection in Minneapolis, MN that we perform, and we’d like to take some time to examine this key part of your fireplace and chimney. The more knowledge you have, the better you’ll be able to take care of your fireplace and understand when to schedule service for it.
January is a month when people get their lives into regular shape after a busy conclusion of the year. Suddenly, we have “normal” weeks and weekends with less crowding our schedules, and that’s a good time to get to some basics about arranging for the new year and taking care of various bookkeeping and planning jobs.
Some of the jobs you may look into doing during the start of the new year will be for home maintenance. We’d like to suggest that one of these maintenance jobs you get done—if you didn’t do it at the end of the year—is a chimney inspection in Minneapolis, MN.
Don’t worry about getting a ladder, flashlight, and old clothes. This isn’t a job you can do yourself. Although you can spot major troubles with your chimney and call for repairs, a full annual inspection requires licensed professionals with the best tools and training. 2nd Generation Chimneys is your best resource for your yearly chimney inspection.
Using a fireplace in a home is one of the great joys of the winter season, and we’re certain you’re looking forward to spending time with your family around the roaring hearth. But before we get too deep into the fireplace season, we want to talk to you about some of the dangers that might lurk in your chimney.
Chimneys and fireplaces need special attention, and it’s our job to provide our customers with the best in chimney inspections and chimney cleaning in Minneapolis, MN to ensure they can stay safe and cozy each year.
Let’s look at several of the common issues that might make your chimney unsafe and the best ways to deal with them or prevent them.
A well-maintained chimney is crucial to keep your fireplace working well for many years and to ensure the fireplace doesn’t create safety hazards. A key part of maintaining your chimney is to schedule routine professional inspections for it.
We recommend having an inspection in Edina, MN done once a year. You can arrange for the service with our pros. We’ll carefully inspect your chimney to locate and address any problems before they can worsen into more expensive repairs or a safety risk.
If you’re wondering what we’re looking for specifically during an inspection, just follow us below. You’ll have a better idea of why these inspections are so important once you know what we might find.
Although fireplaces are wonderful luxuries to have in a home, there are some cases where people simply don’t use them often. Maybe they use them for a few special occasions, but otherwise the fireplace remains cold through most of the year.
Does this mean that regular inspections and maintenance for the chimney are optional? Why invest in professional inspection service if there’s rarely any fire burning in the hearth or smoke wafting up the chimney?
If you’re in a situation where you have a fireplace that you use sparingly, we want to encourage you to still regularly arrange for professional inspections. We’ll explain why below.
On this site, we emphasize the importance of having regular chimney and chimney flue cleaning in Minneapolis, MN. We recommend a yearly cleaning along with a Level 1 chimney inspection to ensure the chimney is free of buildup of creosote and anything that may block it, and to check for possible damage and wear that needs repairs.
But are professionals like ours really necessary? You might wonder if you can clean the chimney yourself. Maybe you can find an online video tutorial. With a face mask, a set of old clothes, tarps on the ground, a few scrubbers on long handles, and a bit of elbow grease, you should be able to get the job done. Right…?
Although we encourage you to handle some chimney maintenance tasks on your own, the actual job of cleaning a chimney is something to leave to the professionals. We’ll explain why below.
We’ve often talked about the importance of having regular fireplace and chimney inspections for any home that has a fireplace. Standard Level 1 inspections make sure a chimney can vent properly and that there isn’t a potentially dangerous buildup of creosote that can lead to a fire.
However, we’ve often found that people who have gas fireplaces rather than wood-burning fireplaces think they don’t need these regular inspections. After all, gas fireplaces burn cleanly, without the concern of the buildup of creosote and soot, so why would they require routine inspections from professionals?
The answer is in the title: gas fireplaces absolutely need to have regular inspections. We’ll explain why a routine fireplace and chimney inspection in Plymouth, MN is necessary even if you aren’t burning wood logs in the fireplace.
In our previous blog, we discussed when you need a chimney inspection and the three different levels of inspection. These levels are established by the National Fire Protection Agency (NFPA) and are standardized to ensure that homeowners receive the inspections necessary for the situation and to protect their households.
When you’re looking to have a chimney inspection in Minneapolis, MN, you’ll probably only need a Level 1 inspection, which is the standard inspection for a chimney that hasn’t experienced any major problems and is receiving regular use. It consists of inspections of all accessible parts of the chimney to look for cracks, creosote, and structural damage—anything that might trigger a repair need or a higher level of inspection.
In this post, we’re going to look at the highest level of inspection, Level 3, because people want to know more about how in-depth it goes and why it’s often necessary.
Many important organizations, including the US Consumer Product Safety Commission, the US Environmental Protection Agency, and the National Fire Protection Association recommend regular chimney inspections to protect homes and the people in them.
You can’t do a chimney inspection on your own. There are many parts you can’t see unless you have special access and equipment. When you decide to have a chimney inspection in Saint Paul, we’re the professionals to call on for the job.
But when should you have the job done? There are several situations where we recommend you schedule a chimney inspection.