Chimney Caps

The Chimney Company offers and installs a wide variety of styles and sizes of copper and stainless steel protective chimney covers, also referred to as rain caps. A chimney cap or spark arrestor has mesh wall coverings that are perfect for keeping out squirrels, birds and raccoons, etc. Chimney caps also help protect against the entry of leaves, twigs and other debris. Caps can help reduce some wind induced downdrafts. Having one of these in place will help reduce the entry of rain and will slow down the deterioration of the internal chimney components.

Having a chimney cap on your chimney is an absolute necessity. Why?
Well it’s pretty simple really, when you burn fires, a certain amount of the smoke is going to cling to the walls of your flue, called creosote. Creosote on its own, although highly flammable once it’s in large quantities, won’t harm your chimney, but once creosote mixes with water it becomes highly acidic and actually starts to eat away at the silica inside your mortar joints.

The mortar joints are the cement product that holds your chimney flue together. Once the silica or the bonding agent is gone from these joints, the mortar reverts back to sand, once that’s happened it’s only a matter of time before it’s going to fall out and deteriorate.
Once you’ve lost the mortar between your terracotta flue tiles, you leave yourself open to some really scary scenarios. First, when you burn wood you create carbon dioxide, carbon monoxide, and a few other gasses at the same time. Normally this isn’t an issue when your fireplace is working correctly, but since you didn’t have a cap installed, those gasses are free to leave your flue and possibly enter other parts of your home.