The Advanced Chimney Sweeps team handles many different types of chimney and fireplace repairs and maintenance. This includes the important task of smoke chamber parging. This sometimes overlooked task is critically important to your home’s safety if you have an older style fireplace construction that has a smoke chamber that is not designed to help the smoke exit well. This can be caused by a "corbelled" surface that is stepped in such a way that it interferes with the drafting of the smoke up the chimney.
What Is Smoke Chamber Parging?
Your fireplace system is made of many components. One of the most important ones is your smoke chamber. This allows dangerous gasses and toxic fumes to safely exit your home whenever you’re burning a fire in your fireplace. It's effectively a tunnel, beginning where your damper ends and leading up to the start of your flue tiles. Think of it as an inverted triangle shape and the top where the flue tiles start is much narrower than the bottom area that is the size of the entire fireplace.
For decades, whenever construction crews would build a home, they would use an older process known as corbelling for the smoke chamber. However, this leaves masonry joints exposed and creates and uneven surface.
Smoke chamber parging is the resurfacing of this entire area. This helps to minimize creosote buildup while also protecting the masonry of your smoke chamber. But the main benefit is the smoke will exit well and the drafting of the fireplace will be correct allowing for a great burn with no smoke coming back into the room.
Why Is Smoke Chamber Parging An Important Task?
Safety is one of the biggest reasons for smoke chamber parging. Without it, your home may be susceptible to chimney fires. In fact, smoke chamber parging is so important that newer home construction standards require this by default.
As many homeowners across the Pittsburgh, PA region south through Northern WV have houses that were built before these new standards, it is imperative that you schedule a routine chimney sweep and inspection to examine the condition of your smoke chamber. Nobody wants to hear about the need for chimney repairs, but safe operation of the fireplace is of the most importance of course. If it needs parging, we’ll let you know and happily provide and estimate for you.
The Benefits Of Smoke Chamber Parging
There are two major benefits of smoke chamber parging. Those are drafting and preventing chimney fires. Once parged, your chimney and fireplace system will work more effectively. This helps to minimize problems with drafting.
And of course, exposed or damaged masonry can eventually deteriorate. This can allow super-hot gasses and sparks to escape into nearby combustable wood framing and it even can create a house fire. Exposing your home’s structure to the high heat of a fire or having excessive creosote buildup catch fire in never a good scenerio.
When To Schedule Chimney Service
The best time to schedule chimney service is after you stop using your fireplace for the season or well before you start using it in the fall. This allows for ample time for our teams to inspect, diagnose, and provide chimney repairs for anything we may encounter. It’s also a good idea to schedule a chimney sweep now if you haven’t had one in over a year or if you suspect you may have problems within your system.
Contact Us For Smoke Chamber Parging in PA and WV
Smoke chamber parging is just one of the many services we’ve provided to our customers in the Greater Pittsburgh area south to Morgantown, Fairmont and Clarksburgh WV area over the past several decades. We also offer chimney sweeps, inspections, repairs, and much more. If your chimney hasn’t had service for a while, contact us today to get onto our schedule. You can call us at (800) 822-2131 or simply by sending us a short message here.
