From the firebox or the roofline a chimney keeps almost all of its real condition hidden, and that is exactly why a camera inspection earns its keep. It trades guesswork for footage. Somerville Chimney Sweep inspects chimneys across the city whether you are buying or selling a home, switching heating appliances, recovering from a draft or smoke problem, or simply want to know where your chimney stands before the heating season. You get a camera scan of the flue, a look at the crown, cap, flashing, and masonry, and a plain written report that grades what needs attention now against what can wait.
- Camera scan run the full length of the flue
- Liner, crown, cap, and flashing all reviewed
- Shared and multiple flues checked for cross-leakage
- Footage and photos paired with a written report
- Findings graded fix-now versus watch-this
- Home-sale and appliance-change inspections handled
What the camera sees that the eye cannot
The heart of a real inspection is the camera run up the flue. A flashlight and a mirror from the firebox tell you almost nothing about a thirty-foot interior chimney, but a camera fed the full length of the flue shows every joint between tiles, every crack, every gap, and every patch of glazed creosote, on a screen you watch with us. On Somerville's older chimneys this is where the truth lives. Clay tile liners that were laid decades ago crack from the heat of a chimney fire, from settling, and from the freeze-thaw cycle working at the mortar joints between them, and a cracked liner lets heat and combustion gases reach the brick and the framing around it.
Shared and multiple flues make the camera even more important in this city. A single masonry chimney on a triple-decker often carries more than one flue, and when the tile separating them has failed, smoke from one unit's fireplace can bleed into another flue or another floor. You cannot see that from below, but the camera can, and finding it is one of the most important things an inspection does on Somerville's stacked housing. We scan each flue the chimney carries rather than assuming one look covers the stack.
The whole chimney, not just the flue
A flue scan is the centerpiece, but a worthwhile inspection takes in the entire structure. We check the crown, the concrete or mortar cap at the very top that sheds water away from the flue, because a cracked crown is one of the most common ways water gets into a Somerville chimney. We look at the cap and spark arrestor, the flashing where the chimney passes through the roof, the exterior brick and mortar joints for spalling and erosion, the damper, and the firebox and smoke chamber. Each of those is a place a problem starts, and reading them together is what tells us whether a leak or a draft issue is coming from the top, the side, or inside the flue.
Somerville's climate concentrates the failures in predictable places, and knowing where to look first is the advantage of a crew that works this city constantly. The crown and the upper masonry take the worst of the freeze-thaw and the wind-driven rain, the flashing fails where the brick meets an aging roof, and the upper flue catches the most creosote because that is where the smoke is coldest. An inspection that understands that local sequence catches the early signs while they are still cheap to address, rather than after water has already tracked down through the brick.
A report you can act on, and act on at your pace
An inspection is only worth as much as the report it produces, and ours is built to be useful rather than alarming. We pair the camera footage and the photos with a written report that says plainly what needs doing now, what can reasonably wait, and what is fine as is. If your chimney is in good shape, you will hear exactly that, because telling a homeowner their chimney has years left is how we earn the call when real work finally is needed. We grade the findings honestly and never recommend anything the footage cannot back up.
There is no obligation riding on the inspection and no closing pitch waiting at the end. The report and the footage are yours to keep whatever you decide, and you are welcome to hold our assessment up against anyone else's. That openness is the point. A home buyer reviewing a chimney before closing, a seller heading off a surprise on the inspection report, and a homeowner switching to a new furnace or stove all need the same thing, real information they can plan around. An inspection turns the unknown condition of an old Somerville chimney into a concrete picture and a clear next step.
Where this work sits in the bigger picture
A chimney is a system, so chimney inspection rarely stands alone, it connects to fireplace sweep, crown repair, a new chimney cap, stainless liner installation, chimney repointing, and our crew handles all of it under one roof. We bring the same service to Chimney Inspection in Cambridge, Medford chimney inspection, Everett chimney inspection, Malden chimney inspection and everywhere else across the Somerville area.
If you searched for a local chimney crew near you, you have reached a local crew, call 617-203-6382 any time. For background, read Caring for the Chimney on a Somerville, MA Victorian on our blog, or head back to our Somerville home page to see everything we do.