Santa's Friend Chimney Service Blog

Common Masonry Repairs for Your Chimney

Whether you have an old, historical home or a modern house with a masonry chimney, you will most likely need to have masonry restoration work done at some point. The most common cause of masonry repair is water damage as water can leak into masonry joints and wear them down, causing deterioration. Other causes of masonry repair are weathering, earthquake damage, poor workmanship, and negligence. If you need masonry repair work done, it is important to find a company experienced in the different types of masonry restoration, like Santa’s Friend Chimney Service. Our masons know how to do each type of this repair work, and we would like to tell you more about the most common masonry repairs.

Tuck Pointing

One of the most common types of masonry restoration, tuck pointing is the process of removing damaged and deteriorating mortar in masonry joints, and then restoring those joints with new materials. A painstaking process, tuck pointing is made even more complicated when an older house is involved. Today’s mortar materials differ greatly in terms of hardness and permeability when compared to the bricks and mortars of years’ past. Experienced masons like the ones at Santa’s Friend Chimney Service know to think about the original materials when dealing with an older home because if they used modern materials, the chimney structure will be unsound as the new and old materials will not work together properly. Our technicians make sure the repairs are invisible and strong enough to last for years.

Chimney Crown Restoration

Since your chimney crown sits atop your chimney to protect it from the elements and animals, it is completely exposed to rain and snow, which causes water erosion damage. The sun causes more damage from the constant heat exposure. After years of these types of damage, your chimney crown starts to crack and spalling begins to occur. When this happens, repair is a top priority because you do not want water leaking into your chimney and penetrating into your masonry joints, which can cause even more problems. Santa’s Friend Chimney Service has experience working with chimney crown restoration, and we can recommend a couple of different approaches, depending on the condition of your crown. If you have minimal damage, our technicians can apply a crown coat repair, a flexible sealant which covers the entire crown, that will seal all cracks and create a waterproof barrier. If the damage is more expensive, we will most likely have to construct a new chimney crown for you; however, with our years of experience, we can build a crown to last a lifetime as well as coat the new crown with a waterproof sealant to protect it from rain and snow.

For more information about the different types of masonry repairs we provide, contact Santa’s Friend Chimney Service. Our expert staff is happy to answer any questions you may have.

Why Are Open Fireplaces So Inefficient?

Sitting in front of an open fireplace in the 18th century, Benjamin Franklin noted, “The strongest heat from the fire, which is upwards, goes directly up the chimney and is lost.” And, honestly, Ben Franklin was right. An open, traditional fireplace is one of the most inefficient wood-burning heating appliances you can use to heat your home. In some cases, the lack of efficiency is so bad that an open fireplace can make your house colder. We at Santa’s Friend Chimney Service would like to tell you more about why the way open fireplaces work make them so inefficient.

Creating a draft is the most important mechanical function of an open fireplace.

Think about a hot air balloon. It rises because of a mass of hot air rises to its top and serves as its “motor.” This same concept goes on in a fireplace and chimney. The fireplace makes a column of heated gas inside the chimney. As that air goes up and exits out the chimney, more hot air from the fire is pulled after it. When this happens, a draft of smoke and hot gases up the chimney is generated. The draft also feeds necessary oxygen to the fire to keep it burning.

Knowing how heat moves can help you understand why an open fireplace can be so inefficient.

Heat moves by conduction, convection, and radiation. Conduction is when a hot object touches a cooler one, convection involves a movable substance, like hot air or liquid, circulating into cooler areas, and radiation is when warm electromagnetic waves, like sun rays, fire, and a heat lamp, carry heat to cooler objects to warm them by making their molecules move faster. A fireplace, of course, uses radiation to move heat. However, convection is also involved, and this is what makes an open fireplace so inefficient. Most of the heat created by a fire is in the form of hot gases. Convection pushes these gases out of the chimney and wastes them.

The draft also can lead to the inefficiency of an open fireplace.

The draft can actually draw more warm air from inside the house up the chimney, which makes the inside colder than it previously was. Experts estimate that open fireplaces can draw up to ten times as much air from the room than is needed to build the fire.

Open fireplaces can even have negative efficiency.

When more heat is lost by convection than is replaced by radiation, negative energy occurs. The colder the temperatures are outside, the colder the air is that gets sucked in by the fireplace. This means that the colder the outside air is, the less efficient your fireplace will be.

Have questions about what to do with an open fireplace? Contact Santa’s Friend Chimney Service to find out how installing a wood-burning fireplace insert can solve your problems.