Chimney Sweep & Masonry • Detroit MI
We keep the fire where it belongs
(313) 364-1744
Sweeps • Repairs • Tuckpointing • Brick & Stone
crownashco.com • Insured • Free Estimates
Chase rebuilt, crown poured, three flues capped.
Two things it keeps out of your house
Smoke and gas go up. Rain and animals stay out. When a chimney stops doing those two jobs it rarely announces it, and the bill lands somewhere else in the house.
This started at the crown
Nobody calls about a cracked crown. They call about a stain on the ceiling, and by then the water has been running down the inside of the stack for a few seasons and the framing is wet.
That is the part worth understanding: almost everything expensive about a chimney started as something cheap that nobody looked at. An inspection is mostly about finding which cheap thing you have right now.
Most of our work is houses
Fireplaces, furnace flues, chases and stacks on ordinary homes across Southeast Michigan. It is the bulk of what we do and the part we are set up to turn around quickly.
Carbon monoxide in the rooms you sleep in
A cracked flue or a liner sized wrong lets combustion gas drift back into the house instead of going up and out. You cannot see it or smell it, which is exactly why it gets missed.
A chimney fire inside the wall
Creosote is fuel. Enough of it burns hot enough to crack tile and reach the framing around the flue. Sweeping takes the fuel out before it has a season to build up.
Water running into your ceilings
A failed crown, open mortar joints or a rusted cover lets rain straight down the stack. It shows up as stains, soft plaster and rotted decking, often a room away from the chimney.
A stack coming apart above the roof
Water gets into the joints, freezes, and pushes the brick faces off a little more each winter. Left long enough the stack leans and there is nothing to repoint.
Same stack, joints cut out and repointed
Mortar is the part of any chimney that fails first, on a house or on a building. Once the joints wash out, every rain goes into the wall instead of running off it. This one sits on a flat commercial roof between two rooftop units, and repointing puts the barrier back either way.
Six things, and what each one prevents
Prices are real ranges, not teasers. Where you land inside one depends on height, how many flues and what we find once we are up there.
A chase cover, the whole way through
A cover is a flat piece of metal sitting in weather for twenty years. When it goes, it takes the framing underneath with it if nobody catches it.
How I run this
I take photos of everything I find up there and I show them to you before I put a number on anything. If something can wait a season, I will tell you it can wait. If it cannot, I will show you the picture and explain what happens if it does.
Most of this work is not glamorous. It is mortar, flashing, covers and liners. Done properly you stop thinking about your chimney entirely, which is the actual goal.
Across Southeast Michigan
Lansing down to Downriver, Ann Arbor across to Detroit. Dearborn, Dearborn Heights, Livonia, Westland, Garden City, Canton, Plymouth, Southfield, Taylor, Lincoln Park and Wyandotte.
Not sure what you are looking at?
Send a photo of the chimney from the ground and one of the firebox. That is usually enough for us to tell you whether it is urgent or whether it can wait, before anybody schedules anything.