Category: Chimney Maintenance

Ivy, moss or green staining on a chimney is a moisture reading, not a decorating question. Growth needs water that stays put, so anything living on your brick is telling you that section of masonry is holding damp instead of shedding it – usually because the crown, the cap or the mortar joints have stopped doing their job.

What each kind of growth is telling you

• Moss, in soft green cushions. Moss colonizes surfaces that stay wet and shaded. On a chimney it shows up on the north face, under a crown that is dumping runoff down the side instead of throwing it clear, or along a course of mortar that has gone soft and porous. Moss holds water against the brick long after the rain stops, which turns an ordinary wet spell into a permanent one.
• Flat green or black staining. Usually algae, and it means the same thing as moss – persistent surface moisture. Black staining low down can also be soot washing down from the crown, and that is a different conversation, because soot on the outside of a chimney means smoke is escaping where it should not.
• Ivy and climbing vines. The serious one. Ivy does not simply sit on brick, it anchors into it. The rootlets exploit hairline gaps in mortar, and as they thicken they lever those gaps wider. The plant also blankets the masonry so it never dries, and it hides everything underneath – you cannot see a cracked crown or a missing joint through a curtain of leaves.

Plenty of older Aurora homes wear their ivy proudly and the masonry beneath it has been fine for decades. The point is not that growth guarantees damage. The point is that it guarantees moisture, and in a climate that crosses freezing dozens of times a winter, sustained moisture in masonry is the mechanism behind nearly every chimney repair we do.

Why moisture plus an Illinois winter is the actual problem

Brick and mortar are porous by design. They take on a little water and give it back up again. What they cannot tolerate is water trapped inside when the temperature crosses freezing, because water expands as it turns to ice and pushes the face of the brick outward from within. Do that repeatedly across a winter and the brick face shears off in flakes – spalling – while the mortar joints erode back until they are recessed and crumbling.

Anything that keeps a wall wet accelerates that cycle. Moss, ivy and algae all do. So does a crown that has cracked, a missing or undersized cap letting rain fall straight down the flue, and flashing that has lifted at the roofline. Growth is often the first thing a homeowner notices, months or years before the brick starts coming apart.

Removing it without making things worse

Do not pressure wash a chimney. It is the most common self-inflicted injury we see on masonry. High pressure drives water deep into the brick, strips out already-weak mortar, and can take the fired face off softer historic brick entirely. The damage does not show up until the following spring.

For moss and algae, a soft brush, a garden-hose rinse and a masonry-safe cleaner used according to its label is the right approach – and all of that on a chimney means working at roof height, which is where most homeowners should stop.

For ivy, cut the vines through at the base and then leave them alone. Let the plant die back over several weeks and the rootlets release their grip far more readily. Tearing live ivy off brick pulls mortar with it and leaves a pockmarked surface that holds even more water than it did before.

What comes after the cleaning

Cleaning treats the symptom. Once the masonry is clear, the question is where the water was coming from, and that usually lands on one of three things: the crown, the cap, or the joints. Crown repair is starting at $319, a cap installed is starting at $159, and tuckpointing is starting at $399, with the full list on our pricing page. Which of those you need is not something to guess at from the ground – it takes a look from the roof and, where the flue is involved, a camera. That is what a chimney repair assessment covers.

One note on sealers. A breathable siloxane water repellent is a legitimate product on sound masonry. A film-forming sealer applied over damp or damaged brick traps moisture behind it and makes spalling worse. Repair first, seal second, and only with the right product.

Get the masonry looked at before freeze-thaw season

We are across Aurora and the Fox Valley seven days a week, 7am to 9pm, insured and bonded. If your chimney has gone green, call us and we will find out why.

Call (630) 451-4178

Written by Josh Amber, co-owner of Ember Chimney Sweepers, Oswego IL. Published October 22, 2026.

A standard fireplace sweeping takes most of an hour – typically 45 to 90 minutes from the time we park to the time we hand you the report. The work happens almost entirely at the firebox, under a sealed drop cloth with a negative-air vacuum running, and a well-run sweep leaves no visible dust in the room.

What the hour is actually spent on

Very little of it is brushing. The brushwork on an ordinary flue takes maybe ten minutes. The rest is setup, inspection and cleanup, and that ratio is the difference between a clean job and a mess.

• Setup, about ten minutes. Drop cloths from the door to the hearth, a tarp sealed over the fireplace opening, and a HEPA-filtered negative-air vacuum drawing from inside the firebox so any airborne soot moves away from your room rather than into it.
• Brushing, ten to twenty minutes. Rods and a brush sized to the flue, worked from the bottom up, the top down, or both, depending on the chimney. Soot and creosote drop into the firebox where the vacuum is already waiting for them.
• Smoke chamber and shelf, ten to fifteen minutes. This is where the buildup usually is. The smoke shelf behind the damper collects debris that a straight brush run down the flue never touches, and it has to be cleared by hand.
• Inspection and photos, fifteen to twenty minutes. With the flue clean, the condition of the liner, crown, cap, damper and firebox is finally visible. Clean first, assess second – the reverse order produces guesses.
• Cleanup and walkthrough, ten minutes. Everything comes up, the hearth gets vacuumed, and we show you what we found before we leave.

What makes a visit run long

Some jobs go past 90 minutes, and it is usually one of a short list of reasons. Heavy third-stage creosote – the hard, glazed kind – does not brush off and may need a different approach entirely. An animal nest packed into the flue has to come out piece by piece. Multi-flue chimneys mean doing the work more than once. And if we find something that needs a closer look, the camera scan adds time.

Homes around Sandwich skew older, and older chimneys are often unlined or lined with clay tiles that have shifted over the decades. Neither is a crisis, but both mean we are not simply running a brush and leaving. We would rather spend the extra twenty minutes than write a report that says less than it should.

What you need to do before we arrive

Not much. No fires for at least 24 hours so the flue is cold and safe to work in – 48 hours is better if you have been burning hard. Move anything breakable off the mantel and clear a path from the nearest door to the fireplace. If the fireplace has glass doors, leave them as they are and we will handle them. And if you know where the chimney comes out on the roof, mention it, because it saves us a lap around the house.

Pets are usually happiest in another room, mostly because of the vacuum noise. Anything you have been curious about is worth writing down before we get there: an odor, a stain on the ceiling, a damper that sticks. Those details point us at the right places to look.

How often, and what it costs

NFPA 211 sets the interval at an inspection once a year for a chimney in use, and the sweeping happens when the inspection says it should. For a household burning regularly through an Illinois winter, that generally works out to annual sweeping. For someone who lights a handful of fires a season it may be every other year – but the annual look still applies, because most of what goes wrong with a chimney has nothing to do with how much you burn.

A chimney sweeping is starting at $119 and a Level 1 inspection is starting at $99. If you want to understand what we check while we are in there, our DIY and homeowner guide walks through what you can safely look at yourself between visits, and the full price list is on the pricing page.

Book a sweeping in Sandwich

We are out seven days a week, 7am to 9pm, insured and bonded. Josh and Jack Amber have 35 years of combined experience and both grew up in Oswego. Call and we will give you a real arrival window rather than a vague half-day.

Call (630) 451-4178

Written by Josh Amber, co-owner of Ember Chimney Sweepers, Oswego IL. Published October 19, 2026.

If a normal load takes two cycles to dry, the dryer is almost never the problem – the vent is. A restricted duct traps the humid air the machine is trying to expel, so the clothes sit in moisture while the heating element keeps cycling. Most of the two-cycle calls we get are solved by clearing the duct, which is starting at $99.

Why a blocked vent doubles your drying time

A clothes dryer does not really heat clothes dry. It heats air, pushes that air through the drum to pick up moisture, and then blows the wet air outside. The drying happens in the last step. When lint narrows the duct, airflow drops, and the machine ends up recirculating air that is already saturated. The thermostat reads heat, not humidity, so the dryer happily runs a full cycle and delivers damp laundry.

That is the version homeowners notice. The version they do not notice is the heat. Restricted ducts hold hot, lint-laden air against the heating element and the back of the cabinet, and lint is excellent fuel. Dryer fires are one of the more common household ignition sources, and they start in exactly this condition.

The duct runs in a lot of Romeoville houses make this worse than it needs to be. Laundry rooms moved off the exterior wall to the middle of the floor plan or up to the second floor, and the duct gained length and several elbows to reach daylight. Every 90-degree turn costs you roughly as much airflow as several extra feet of straight pipe.

The signs that show up before the two-cycle stage

• The laundry room feels humid or warm while the dryer runs. Air that should be leaving the building is leaking out of joints in the duct instead.
• Clothes come out hot but damp. Plenty of heat, nowhere for the moisture to go.
• The outside vent hood barely moves. Go outside mid-cycle and hold a hand near the flap. You should feel a strong, steady push of warm air. A weak trickle, or a flap that never opens fully, is a restriction.
• Lint is visible around the hood or on the siding – or the flap is propped open by a mat of lint, which then lets birds and mice into the duct.
• A faint scorched smell at the end of a cycle. Stop using the dryer and get the duct cleared before you run it again.
• The dryer shuts itself off mid-cycle. Many machines have a thermal cut-out that trips when exhaust cannot escape. If yours is tripping, it is doing its job and telling you something.

What you can do yourself, and where to stop

Clean the lint screen after every single load, and once a season pull the screen and wash it with warm water and a little dish soap. Fabric softener sheets leave an invisible film on the mesh that cuts airflow even when the screen looks clean – if water beads on it instead of running straight through, it needs a wash.

Replace any flexible foil or vinyl accordion duct with rigid or semi-rigid metal. The ribbed stuff catches lint in every corrugation and crushes flat behind the machine when you push it back against the wall. Pull the dryer out far enough that the duct is not kinked, and check that the exterior hood flap swings freely.

Where to stop is the long run. A shop vacuum at the back of the machine pulls out the first few feet and leaves the rest, and pushing a brush in from the wrong end can pack a soft blockage tighter. A proper dryer vent cleaning uses a rotating brush on a flexible rod run the full length with a vacuum capturing debris, and it finishes with an airflow check at the hood so you know the restriction is actually gone rather than merely disturbed.

How often it needs doing

Once a year covers most households. Move that to twice a year if you have a large family, if you dry pet bedding, or if the duct run is longer than about 25 feet with several turns in it. If you have just moved in and have no idea when it was last done, start with a cleaning so you have a baseline. While we are in the house, it is a sensible time to look at the chimney as well – the same visit usually covers both.

Get the vent cleared before laundry day gets any longer

We are in Romeoville and across Will and Kendall County seven days a week, 7am to 9pm, insured and bonded. Dryer vent cleaning is starting at $99, with the full list on our pricing page. If your dryer is taking two cycles, call and we will measure the airflow rather than guess at it.

Call (630) 451-4178

Written by Josh Amber, co-owner of Ember Chimney Sweepers, Oswego IL. Published October 18, 2026.

Air duct cleaning is worth paying for in three situations: visible mold growth inside the ductwork, evidence of rodents or insects in the system, or ducts clogged enough that dust and debris blow out of the registers. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s guidance on duct cleaning points to those same conditions. Outside of them, routine cleaning every year is not something most homes need, and anyone telling you otherwise is selling something.

The cases where cleaning makes sense

Visible mold. If you can see mold growth on the inside of sheet metal ducts or on components of the furnace and air handler, cleaning is justified, but only alongside finding out why moisture got there in the first place. Cleaning without fixing a condensation or leak problem just resets the clock.

Rodents or insects. Droppings, nesting material or dead insects in the ductwork are a clear reason to clean, after the entry point has been sealed and the infestation dealt with.

Heavy dust and debris. If puffs of dust come out of the registers when the system starts, or you can see thick debris when you remove a register cover, the ducts are carrying material around the house every time the blower runs. Construction dust is the most common source of this, which we covered separately in our post on air duct cleaning after a remodel.

Moving into a home where you do not know the history, particularly after a previous owner with pets or heavy smoking, is also a reasonable time to have the system looked at and cleaned if the inspection supports it.

The cases where it usually is not worth it

A normal amount of light dust on the register grilles is not a sign the ducts need cleaning. Neither is general household dustiness, which usually has more to do with the filter, how often the house is vacuumed, and outdoor air coming in. The EPA also notes that there is no conclusive evidence that routine duct cleaning prevents health problems in a typical home.

Before booking, check the simple things: replace the furnace filter with the correct size, make sure it is seated without gaps around its edges, and change it on schedule. That alone solves a lot of what people think is a duct problem.

What to ask before you hire anyone

Ask how the whole system will be cleaned, not just the registers. A proper job puts the ductwork under negative pressure with a collection unit and agitates the debris loose with brushes or air whips, covering supply and return runs, the blower compartment and the coil area where it is accessible. Ask whether they will show you the before-and-after condition.

Be cautious about chemical sanitizers or coatings added as an automatic upsell. They should be a deliberate decision for a specific problem, not a default line item. And be skeptical of very low advertised prices that only cover a handful of vents and grow on arrival.

Is it worth it for your Shorewood home?

Many homes in Shorewood are newer builds where the ductwork is still in good condition, so the honest answer for plenty of them is to change the filter and wait. If one of the three situations above applies, our air duct cleaning service explains how we do the work, and the starting rate is published on the pricing page. Keep in mind that dryer vent cleaning is a separate, fire-related job and is worth doing regardless.

Get a straight answer first

Ember Chimney Sweepers is owned by Josh Amber and his brother Jack, both born and raised in Oswego, with 35 years of combined experience. We are insured and bonded, and we answer calls seven days a week between 7am and 9pm. Call and describe what you are seeing; if cleaning will not help, we will tell you.

Call (630) 451-4178

Written by Josh Amber, co-owner of Ember Chimney Sweepers, Oswego IL. Published October 15, 2026.

Spalling is when the face of a brick flakes, crumbles or pops off, and on a chimney it is almost always caused by water soaking into the brick and then freezing. Every freeze expands that water and pushes the surface apart. It will not stop on its own: the damaged brick absorbs even more water, so the next winter does more damage than the last.

What spalling looks like

You will see bricks whose outer face has broken away in flat shards or rounded pockets, leaving a rough, often lighter-colored surface behind. Look for brick chips on the roof, in gutters, or on the ground at the base of an exterior chimney after winter. Early spalling can be a single brick or a few on the most weather-exposed side; advanced spalling leaves whole courses eroded and mortar joints standing proud of the brick around them.

It is most common on the portion of a chimney above the roofline, which has no protection from wind-driven rain and cycles through freezing and thawing more often than any other part of the house.

Where the water is coming from

Brick is porous by nature and handles normal rain well as long as it can dry out. Spalling means it is getting more water than it can shed. The usual sources are a cracked or undersized crown sending runoff down the brick face, a missing cap letting rain into the flue and the masonry around it, failed mortar joints, and gutters or roof valleys that dump water against the chimney.

Two well-meant repairs also cause it. Repointing soft old brick with very hard modern mortar forces moisture to escape through the brick instead of the joints. And coating a chimney with a non-breathable sealer or paint traps moisture inside the brick, so the face blows off from behind the coating. If a chimney is going to be treated, it should be with a vapor-permeable water repellent made for masonry, applied only after repairs.

How spalling gets repaired

The fix depends on how far it has gone. Isolated damaged bricks can be cut out and replaced with matching units, with the joints around them repointed. Where spalling covers a large area above the roofline, the practical repair is usually to take the chimney down to sound masonry and rebuild that section. In either case, the water source has to be fixed at the same time, or the new brick starts the same cycle.

Pressure washing is not a repair. High-pressure water drives more moisture into the brick and can strip the fired surface off softer brick outright.

Joliet has a wide range of housing stock, from older brick homes near downtown to newer construction on the city’s west side, and we see spalling on both, though the older chimneys with softer brick tend to go first. If you are in Joliet and have noticed brick chips on the roof, it is worth getting a look before the next freeze.

Check it from the ground

Binoculars on a clear day are enough to spot most spalling. Compare the brick above the roofline with the brick lower down, check the side that faces the prevailing weather, and look for chips in the gutters. Inside, damp patches or a musty smell near the fireplace can be the same water problem showing up from the other side.

Our masonry and tuckpointing page explains how we match mortar and replace brick, broader structural work is on the chimney repair page, and our rates are on the pricing page.

Have the masonry looked at before winter

Ember Chimney Sweepers is two brothers from Oswego, Josh and Jack Amber, with 35 years of combined experience. We are insured and bonded, we work to NFPA 211, and we take calls seven days a week from 7am to 9pm.

Call (630) 451-4178

Written by Josh Amber, co-owner of Ember Chimney Sweepers, Oswego IL. Published October 14, 2026.

Chirping from the chimney in summer is almost always chimney swifts, a federally protected bird whose active nests cannot legally be removed; heavier scratching or chattering is usually a raccoon. In both cases the first rule is the same: do not light a fire to drive them out. Close the fireplace doors, keep the damper shut, and deal with the animal before you cap the chimney.

Why lighting a fire is the wrong move

Smoking an animal out is the instinct, and it is the one that causes the most damage. Nests are made of twigs, leaves and debris sitting directly in the flue or on the smoke shelf, which is ideal kindling. A fire underneath one can ignite it inside the chimney. A young animal that cannot climb will not escape upward either, and a panicked adult may come down into the room instead.

Keep the damper closed and any glass doors or screen shut, and keep pets away from the fireplace. If an animal has already come down into the firebox, shut the room, open an exterior door or window from that room if you can do so safely, and leave it alone.

Birds: chimney swifts and the protected season

Chimney swifts are small, dark, cigar-shaped birds that cling to vertical surfaces rather than perching, and the inside of an uncapped masonry flue is exactly the surface they look for. They are protected under the federal Migratory Bird Treaty Act, which means an active nest, eggs or young cannot be disturbed. The chirping usually gets louder for a couple of weeks as the chicks grow, then stops.

The practical answer is patience. Swifts leave for their fall migration, and once they are gone the nest can be swept out and the top of the flue capped so they choose somewhere else next spring. Other birds such as starlings and sparrows are not protected in the same way, but their nests are just as flammable and just as likely to block the flue.

Raccoons and squirrels: call wildlife control first

Raccoons climb chimneys easily and a mother will use a smoke shelf as a den for her young in spring. Squirrels tend to fall in and get stuck, which produces frantic scratching against the damper. Neither is a job for a chimney sweep to start with. A licensed wildlife control operator can remove the animals humanely; once the chimney is empty, we clean out the nesting material, droppings and debris, check that the damper still works, and cap the flue.

Do not seal the top of the chimney while an animal may still be inside. That leads to a far worse smell a few weeks later and a much bigger cleanup.

Keeping them out for good in Sugar Grove

A properly fitted cap with intact mesh is the fix. Animals get in because the cap is missing, has blown off, has rusted through, or has mesh large enough to squeeze past. On newer homes around Sugar Grove that have a prefabricated chimney inside a framed chase, the place to check is the chase cover and the termination cap rather than a clay flue tile.

Autumn is the right time to act on this, after the nesting birds have gone and before a winter of fires. Our caps and dampers page covers the options, a chimney sweep clears out whatever the animals left behind, and our published rates are on the pricing page.

Get the chimney cleared and capped

Ember Chimney Sweepers is two brothers from Oswego, Josh and Jack Amber, with 35 years of combined experience. We are insured and bonded and we answer the phone seven days a week, 7am to 9pm. If something has been living in your chimney, call before you light the first fire of the season.

Call (630) 451-4178

Written by Josh Amber, co-owner of Ember Chimney Sweepers, Oswego IL. Published October 11, 2026.

A remodel is one of the few situations where duct cleaning is clearly worth doing. Drywall sanding alone produces an extremely fine dust that stays airborne for hours and settles inside every open supply and return in the house, and cutting, sanding and demolition add to it. The EPA does not recommend cleaning ducts on a routine schedule, but it does recommend it when there is substantial visible debris, and post-construction dust is exactly that. Ours starts at $99.

What a remodel actually puts into your ductwork

Joint compound dust is the main offender. It is milled and sanded to a powder far finer than household dust, it hangs in the air long after the sanding stops, and it goes wherever the air goes. If the furnace ran even once during the work, every register in the house pulled some of it in. If registers were left uncovered, which they usually are, it went in directly by gravity.

Behind that comes sawdust from cutting trim and subfloor, insulation fibers disturbed inside walls and ceilings, and the general grit of demolition. If any part of the project involved opening a wall or a ceiling cavity, decades of settled construction dust from the original build gets stirred up and redistributed. In an older home that can include material you would rather not circulate.

Two things make it worse. Contractors frequently run the system to keep the house comfortable while working, which turns the HVAC into a distribution network for everything in the air. And unsealed return openings act as vacuums for the entire duration of the job. Taping registers shut before work starts prevents most of this, and almost nobody does it.

The result shows up afterward as dust that reappears within a day of cleaning, a fine grey film on the furniture nearest the registers, visible debris at the edges of the vent covers, and a filter that loads far faster than it used to. If your filter is going grey in three weeks when it used to last three months, that is the ductwork emptying itself into your rooms.

When duct cleaning is worth it, and when it is not

We would rather tell you not to buy something you do not need, so here is the honest split.

Worth doing: after a remodel or new construction, after any water intrusion into the ducts, if there is visible mold growth on the interior duct surfaces or the equipment, if there is evidence of rodents or insects nesting in the ducts, or if you can see debris being blown out of the registers. Also worth doing if you are moving into a home whose history you do not know, particularly if the previous owners smoked or kept pets.

Not worth doing: as an annual ritual on a house where nothing has changed. There is no good evidence that routine cleaning of an ordinary, dry, debris-free duct system improves health, and the EPA says as much. If a company calls to tell you every home needs it yearly, that is a sales script, not guidance.

There is one exception worth separating out entirely, because people conflate the two. Dryer vent cleaning, starting at $99, is a genuine annual safety item regardless of remodels, because lint accumulation is a documented fire cause and it builds up continuously with normal use. That is a different duct with a different risk profile.

What a real cleaning involves

The method that works is source removal: the system is put under negative pressure with a high-powered vacuum so that everything loosened has somewhere to go, then each run is agitated mechanically with brushes or compressed-air tools to release what is stuck to the duct walls. Every supply and every return gets addressed, not a sample of them, along with the plenums and the blower compartment.

Things to be skeptical about: a company that hooks a shop vac to one register and calls it done, and anyone who wants to fog a chemical sanitizer or “disinfectant” through the system as an add-on. If there is real mold, the correct response is to find and fix the moisture source, not to spray a coating over it. If there is no mold, there is nothing to sanitize.

Our air duct cleaning starts at $99 and the whole rate sheet is on the pricing page, so you know the number before we arrive. We work all over the western suburbs, and Plainfield generates more of these calls than most, because it has both a large stock of nineties and two-thousands homes now hitting their first serious kitchen and basement renovations, plus newer builds where the post-construction dust was never dealt with in the first place.

Finishing a remodel? Get the ducts cleared before you move back in

Ember Chimney Sweepers is run by two brothers born and raised in Oswego, 35 years of combined experience, insured and bonded, working seven days a week from 7am to 9pm. Scheduling this after the dust-producing trades are finished and before you put the furniture back is the version that actually saves you work.

Call (630) 451-4178

Written by Josh Amber, co-owner of Ember Chimney Sweepers, Oswego IL. Published October 8, 2026.

A throat damper that no longer seals is almost always warped cast iron or a hinge packed with rust and ash, and it usually cannot be made airtight again because it was never designed to be airtight in the first place. The practical fix is a top-sealing damper, starting at $239, which mounts at the top of the flue with a rubber gasket and closes the chimney like a lid. It stops the draft, keeps rain and animals out, and does the job of a cap at the same time.

Throat dampers were never a seal

The metal plate above your firebox is a throat damper. Its original purpose was to let you throttle the draft while a fire burns and to close off the worst of the airflow when it is out. It is a cast iron plate resting on a cast iron frame, metal against metal, with nothing between them. Even brand new, a good one leaks.

Twenty or thirty years in, it leaks considerably more. Cast iron warps under repeated heating and cooling, so the plate stops sitting flat. Ash and creosote build a ridge along the seat that holds the plate a few millimeters open. The hinge pins rust and seize, and the plate stops rotating fully closed even when the handle says it is. On a lot of the homes we work on, the damper has a visible daylight gap along one edge.

That gap is a hole in the top of your house, open to the sky, all winter. Warm air rises out of it continuously and cold air comes down alongside. Homeowners describe it as a cold room, a draft they cannot locate, or a furnace that runs more than it should on the side of the house with the fireplace. In summer it runs the other way, pulling humid outdoor air down the flue and carrying the creosote smell into the room with it.

How to test yours in two minutes

Make sure there has been no fire for at least 24 hours, then open the fireplace doors and close the damper as far as the handle will go. Hold a lit stick of incense or a strip of tissue paper just inside the firebox opening, up near the damper. If the smoke or the tissue pulls steadily upward, air is moving through a damper you believe is shut.

Then look. Take a flashlight, get your head into the firebox and shine it up at the closed plate. If you can see daylight anywhere around the edge, you have your answer. While you are there, check whether ash has piled onto the seat, because sweeping that ledge clean occasionally recovers a partial seal on a plate that is not yet warped.

Finally, work the handle through its full travel. A damper that binds, drops, or has to be lifted and wiggled is a damper with a failing hinge, and those eventually fall out of the frame entirely. A damper plate that lets go while a fire is burning is a genuinely bad afternoon.

Why the top-sealing version is the better answer

A top-sealing damper sits on the crown at the top of the flue, with a silicone or rubber gasket that compresses against a metal frame. You operate it with a stainless cable that runs down the flue to a handle mounted inside the firebox. Closed, it seals against a soft gasket instead of metal on metal, which is why it actually stops airflow rather than reducing it.

The second advantage is that it closes the chimney at the top rather than partway down. With a throat damper, the entire flue above the plate stays open to the weather: rain falls into it, snow melts in it, and the masonry stays wet through every freeze-thaw cycle of an Illinois winter. Sealing at the top keeps the whole flue dry, which slows the mortar and liner deterioration that eventually turns into a repair bill.

The third is that most top-sealing dampers include a mesh screen, so they also serve as your cap. If your cap is missing or rusted through and your damper is leaking, you are looking at two problems with one solution instead of paying for a new cap and a separate damper repair.

This comes up often in Naperville, where a great many homes were built in the seventies and eighties with a standard builder-grade throat damper that has now had four decades of use. The house has since been insulated, sealed and upgraded around it, and that original damper is frequently the largest single air leak left in the building envelope.

We cover the hardware and installation options on our caps and dampers page, and the top-sealing damper’s starting price and everything else is published on the pricing page. If you want to try clearing the seat and freeing the hinge yourself first, the DIY guide explains how to do that without breaking the plate.

Stop heating the sky

Ember Chimney Sweepers is two brothers from Oswego with 35 years of combined experience, insured and bonded, working seven days a week from 7am to 9pm. A leaking damper costs you money quietly every single day of the heating season, and it is one of the shorter jobs we do. Ask us to check it while we are there for your sweep.

Call (630) 451-4178

Written by Josh Amber, co-owner of Ember Chimney Sweepers, Oswego IL. Published October 7, 2026.

Yes. If you only light ten or twelve fires a winter, you still need an inspection every year, and most light-use fireplaces need an actual sweep every second or third season. Occasional burning is deceptive: short, cool fires deposit more creosote per hour of burn than long hot ones, so low use does not mean a clean flue. A Level 1 inspection, starting at $99, is what tells you which year the sweep, starting at $119, is due.

Light use deposits creosote faster per fire, not slower

Creosote is unburned wood gas that condenses on cool masonry. The two dirtiest phases of any fire are the first twenty minutes, when the flue is still cold and the wood is off-gassing hard, and the last hour, when the fire is smoldering down and flue temperatures fall. A household that burns one fire a month lives almost entirely in those two phases. Every fire is a cold start followed by a slow die-down, and the middle stretch of clean, hot, complete combustion barely happens at all.

Compare that to a home that burns nightly through January. The flue never fully cools between loads, the masonry stays warm, and fresh wood goes onto a hot bed of coals instead of cold kindling. That chimney is working closer to the temperature range where wood gas burns instead of condensing. It sees far more total burn hours, but a surprising amount of those hours are clean ones.

The practical result is that occasional burners are often shocked at what comes out of a flue they assumed was barely used. Sweeps generally take action at roughly an eighth of an inch of buildup, and a few seasons of weekend fires on marginal wood will get there. Adding damp or unseasoned wood accelerates it sharply, and occasional burners are the most likely to grab whatever is stacked by the garage rather than wood that has dried a full year.

A chimney that sits unused is still weathering

Soot is only half the reason for an annual look. The other half is that the structure ages whether you burn or not. Freeze-thaw cycles pull moisture into mortar joints and split them. Crowns develop hairline cracks that widen every winter. A missing or rusted-through cap lets rain fall straight down the flue, and an open flue in spring is an invitation to birds, squirrels and raccoons that will build a nest tight enough to block the passage completely.

We see this pattern constantly in Sandwich, where a lot of the housing stock is older farmhouses and mid-century homes with a fireplace that gets used at holidays and not much else. Those chimneys are frequently sound inside and failing outside. The flue is clean, the crown is cracked, and water has been running down the exterior of the liner for years. Nobody noticed because nobody was up there looking.

A blocked flue is the version of this that turns dangerous fast. The first fire of the season in a nest-packed chimney pushes smoke and carbon monoxide back into the room, and the homeowner usually blames the damper. It is worth knowing what is up there before you strike a match in November.

What to actually schedule if you burn a few times a year

Book a Level 1 inspection every year, in spring or late summer. It starts at $99, among the lowest prices on our list, it takes under an hour, and it produces the one piece of information you need: how much buildup is in there and what condition the crown, cap, damper and mortar are in. If the deposits are light, you skip the sweep that year with actual evidence rather than a guess.

When the inspection says it is time, a standard sweep starts at $119 and clears the flue, smoke chamber and firebox. If the cap is gone or rusted through, replacing it, starting at $159, will do more to protect the chimney over the next decade than any amount of sweeping, because it stops the water. Our full pricing page lists the rest so you can see what an inspection might turn into before you book.

One more thing worth doing yourself: burn better wood. Two fires a year on wood seasoned a full twelve months will leave less behind than twenty fires on wood cut last spring. Our DIY guide covers how to check moisture without buying a meter.

Get a straight answer about your flue

Ember Chimney Sweepers is run by two brothers born and raised in Oswego, with 35 years of combined experience across Kendall, Kane and DeKalb County homes. We are insured and bonded, and we work seven days a week from 7am to 9pm, which means a light-use fireplace does not have to wait three weeks for a weekday slot. If you have not had eyes on your chimney in several years, that is the conversation to have now rather than in December.

Call (630) 451-4178

Written by Josh Amber, co-owner of Ember Chimney Sweepers, Oswego IL. Published October 3, 2026.

Repointing historic brick with modern high-portland mortar is the single most damaging thing a contractor can do to an old chimney. The new mortar is harder than the brick, so the brick becomes the sacrificial element and spalls within a few winters.

Mortar is supposed to be the weak point

In a correctly built masonry chimney the mortar is deliberately softer than the brick. That is not a compromise, it is the design. Masonry moves, and something has to absorb that movement. Better the mortar, which can be ground out and replaced, than the brick, which cannot.

Nineteenth-century construction, which Plano’s historic core has in quantity, used soft lime-rich mortars that did this job well. They erode over decades, and repointing is routine expected maintenance.

What goes wrong with modern mortar

Modern portland-based mortars are considerably harder and much less permeable than historic lime mortar. Put them into a joint between soft old bricks and two things happen.

First, the hardness relationship inverts. The brick is now the softer element, so when the masonry moves, the brick takes the stress and its face fractures. Second, the reduced permeability traps moisture that would previously have evaporated through the joints, forcing it out through the brick face instead, where freeze-thaw pops it off.

Both produce the same result: spalling brick faces. It is irreversible, and matching replacement brick on nineteenth-century masonry is rarely perfect.

What proper repointing looks like

Deteriorated mortar is ground out to a proper depth, generally two to two and a half times the joint width, not simply scratched at the surface. Fresh mortar matched in strength and appearance is packed in layers, then tooled to match the original joint profile so it sheds water as designed.

Smearing new mortar over old joints is the shortcut that looks acceptable for one season and then falls out. We assess the existing masonry and match to it rather than defaulting to whatever mix is on the truck. Details on our tuckpointing page.

One timing note: mortar needs sustained temperatures above roughly 40 degrees to cure. Repointing in this area realistically runs spring through early autumn.

Talk to a local chimney pro

Plano’s downtown is well enough preserved that it stood in for a 1930s streetscape on film. If you own masonry of that vintage, it deserves matched materials. See our Plano page.

Call (630) 451-4178

Written by Josh Amber, co-owner of Ember Chimney Sweepers, Oswego IL. Published September 30, 2026.