Chimney Sweep in Marietta, GA

Chimney Sweep for Marietta Homeowners

Marietta covers more chimney history than anywhere else we serve. Around the Square and Whitlock Avenue there are genuinely antebellum and Victorian homes with hand-laid brick flues and lime mortar that predates Portland cement, and they need to be treated accordingly — a hard modern mortar mix on that brick will destroy it. Push east into the 1980s and 1990s East Cobb subdivisions and the picture changes completely: prefabricated fireplaces, framed chases, metal chase covers. The two jobs share a name and almost nothing else, and the mistake is applying one approach to the other.

Antebellum and Victorian lime-mortar brickwork near the Square; 1980s-1990s prefabricated systems in framed chases through East Cobb.

Wood smoke cools as it climbs, and what condenses on the way out is creosote — a black, tarry residue that hardens into a fuel lining the inside of your flue. Past about an eighth of an inch it will carry a fire, and a flue fire moves through a chimney in seconds. Atlanta makes this worse in its own way: nobody here burns steadily for four months, we burn hard for a fortnight in January and then abandon the fireplace until Thanksgiving. Cold masonry, damp masonry, smouldering fires and unseasoned oak all lay creosote down faster than steady daily burning would. Sweeping is the one piece of maintenance that removes the fuel rather than managing it.