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If your home was built before 1940 -- like many houses in Suffolk County -- you may not have a modern clay tile liner in your chimney. Clay tile liners didn't really come into common use until the mid-1940s, and they were a huge blessing to homeowners that relied on fireplaces either for warmth or simply for ambience. As homeowners learn about the benefits of a modern chimney liner, many decide they want one. But is it a good idea to attempt DIY chimney relining? In Suffolk NY, the answer is clearly "no".

That's because Suffolk has several reliable, inexpensive, and talented groups who are chimney pros. Suffolk -- and in fact all of Long Island -- has some of the best chimney repairmen in the state, especially experienced with older homes.

Before A Relining
In older, unlined chimneys, missing or cracked bricks can cause leaks -- water gets in, smoke gets out, and all manner of havoc results. A building inspector has special tools that can tell you about the quality of the bricks in your chimney, and you may need to call a chimney pro out to your home in order to get the chimney repaired before you have it lined.

DIY Costs
The biggest reason why even handy homeowners find DIY relining a bad idea is the costs involved. Chimney relining requires quite a few expenses -- from hiring an expert to make sure that you properly follow building and fire safety codes during the project to a variety of specialized tools that don't do much outside of relining a chimney.

Metal vs. Tile
If you choose to put in a tile liner, you're looking forward to extended amounts of time sitting inside your fireplace or leaning into your chimney using those tools to affix tiles to the inside of your brickwork. Then you get to wait while they dry in place, go back to make sure they're still in place, fix them if they're not, or move on to the next row if they are.

Metal, on the other hand, requires even more specialized tools as you'll be cutting sharp metal, precisely fitting joints, bends, and caps together, and (again) hanging out in very tight spaces making sure that you did it all right the first time and it all fits together without leaking.

In terms of materials alone, a professional is usually an excellent idea because they have resources for tiles and metal that you don't. When you add in the time factor and their ability to get it done right on the first go-round, the idea of DIY chimney relining is just silly, no matter where you live.

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For the last century, masons and building construction experts have been using almost exclusively a substance called Portland cement in their creations. The advantages were obvious when it was first created: it dried faster, was more waterproof, and was harder than it's predecessor, hydraulic lime.

But as it turns out, Portland cement isn't ideal in all circumstances. Many builders are just learning that it has its problems -- and that the old-school hydraulic lime combats most of those same problems.

Waterproofing
You'd think that if Portland cement is more waterproof than hydraulic lime, it would be better for waterproofing your house, right? That bit of intuition fails, however. It turns out that hydraulic lime's semi-permeable nature is good for keeping your building dry. That's because bricks and stone actually absorb tiny amounts of water from rain and humidity. Hydraulic lime wicks the moisture out of the blocks, keeping them dry, which in turn makes them less likely to crack and let water in to your home.

Hardness
Portland cement is indeed harder than hydraulic lime -- but that's not a good thing. Think about it this way -- which is harder, a plate or a chicken? Which would be more likely to survive a hit from a baseball bat? The chicken might be pretty unhappy about it, but it wouldn't explode into a thousand pieces like the plate would. That same principle applies here. Hydraulic lime is way better for chimney repoining, Nassau County experts say, because it's more flexible.

Drying Faster
Portland cement dries faster because it has salts in it that speed the drying process. But what it took scientists decades to realize is that the same salts cause Portland cement to start degrading the instant it finishes getting hard. Meanwhile, hydraulic lime takes a lot longer to dry, but rather than particles of salt drifting through the substance harming it, lime particles drift through the hydraulic lime. When the substance gets wet, the lime actually moves toward the source of the water and helps patch the hole -- it's a self-healing process.

With all of these huge advantages, it's clear that waiting a little while longer for the hydraulic lime to dry is a small price to pay. Almost every chimney pro Nassau homeowners ask either promotes hydraulic lime, or has yet to learn about it.

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In Part I, we talked a bit about the basics of chimney removal in NYC, including the whys and some of the difficulties involved in the process. Below, we'll go into a few specifics on those difficulties.

New York building code has several elements that must be attended to when removing a New York City chimney.

• Fire safety
• Structural strength
• Ventilation during and after the process
• Permissions
• And if the wall the chimney is in is shared between two units, it adds a whole new level of complexity.

Generally, the issue of fire safety is just a matter of common sense. In some cases the city will require what's called 'one-hour fireproofing' -- the addition of a lining that takes the average house fire an hour to burn through -- in the wall the chimney is removed from.

Structural strength is the topic of a lot of building code discussion. One common way of removing a chimney under the structural strength codes is to insert a steel structural beam into the chimney. In the case of particularly small chimney breasts, a gallows bracket on the outside of the wall will suffice in place of the steel beam.

Ventilation is only really a concern if the chimney was the room's primary source of ventilation. If that was the case, removal of the chimney might also require the addition of another source of airflow.

Permissions to perform the chimney removal might be necessary if the structure is a registered landmark, historical building, or has some other sort of acknowledged value with the state of New York.

Of course, there are other issues with chimney removal as well. If you've had a broken chimney, NYC contractors will generally insist on an inspection of your attic or ceiling to make sure that there's no dry rot that will exacerbate any structural issues.

If your fireplace has been used recently and is now getting removed, it's wise to -- and most chimney pros will insist that you -- get it thoroughly cleaned before the removal processes begins. Otherwise, you risk shaking creosote dust and a variety of other toxic chemicals across your home.

In short, if you're considering a full-blown chimney removal, be aware that what you're asking for isn't easy, brief, or a DIY project. Call the chimney professionals up front and get a good idea of what it will take, and ask yourself if it's worth it.

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New York City is dotted with houses that range in age from a few days to a few hundred years, and many of those old houses still survive today with a single source of heat: their centuries-old fireplace. These once-vital parts of a Victorian-era or even much older home are on the go, however, due to the recent drop in cost and rise in efficiency of heat pumps.

Making Spaces It's not an easy thing to get rid of, though. Chimney removal in NYC means finding someone licensed by the state to come in and fundamentally alter a good portion of your home's structure. On the other hand, a traditional 'chimney breast' -- that is, the part of your chimney that extends into the room that your fireplace sits in -- takes up dozens if not scores of square feet that could be better used for...well, anything else.

Of course, there are cosmetic considerations -- fireplaces are pretty in addition to being functional -- but you also have to ask yourself what would look better there. Perhaps it's the perfect place to hang a flat-screen TV, or put up a beautiful mahogany bookshelf. Fireplaces are often the focal point of a room, which makes them prime real estate for other things you might want to focus on.

Professionals Only There's a good reason you have to have a certified professional to come in and remove your chimney: screwing it up can severely damage your home. Chimneys tend to run alongside or in some cases bestructural elements of a home, so a chimney removal isn't a light job. Even if you have to call in a chimney pro from Long Island or the mainland, always make sure you get someone that knows exactly what they're doing for this big of a job.

In particular, a chimney breast tends to be made of a few very heavy parts. If the wall supporting the breast isn't properly supported, it can come down during the process. This can sometimes be a good thing if the wall isn't load-bearing and you were planning on removing it anyway, but more often than not it's a huge problem. In Part II, we'll go into a few details about building code and chimney removal that will have you searching the phone book for the absolute most professional group you can find for this important job.

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Wintertime is coming, and it's time to think about more than just puffy coats and snow tires. Your house also needs it's yearly winterization ritual -- time to seal external water pipes so that they don't freeze, inspect the roof tiles for damage, and get your chimney blockage corrected. Long Island homes often go without that last item because homeowner rationalize that they have a heat pump, so why would they need a fireplace?

Well, besides the romance of sitting in front of a crackling fire and sipping cocoa over a game of Scrabble, there's the latest ecological insight. It turns out that heat pumps are actually worse for the environment than wood stoves because of the immense cost of transporting natural gas across the ocean from where it's collected. But that's beside the point.

The point is, you shouldn't ever decide that not using your fireplace all winter is a valid option next to the relatively easy and inexpensive step of getting a Long Island chimney pro to come out and fix it for you.

Even if you don't know that your chimney is blocked up, calling a chimney pro to come out and look your firebox, flue, and chimney over for potential problems should always be a part of your winterization ritual. There are too many parts to a chimney that can wear down over the summer months for it to go uninspected.

A yearly inspection and basic cleanup will prevent chimney fires, extend the life of your flue, your chimney lining, and your home, and of course allow you those Scrabble games mentioned earlier.

More importantly, if you do try to use your fireplace with a blocked chimney, you're going to have all kinds of problems: flue fires if the blockage will burn, smoke inhalation if it blocks most of the chimney, and damage to your flashing if it's anything hard and/or pointy. Far better to get the problem taken care of in advance so that you can use your fireplace with confidence.

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Most homeowners never give a single thought to it until it's too late, but there's actually a lot to think about when it comes to chimney repair. In Suffolk County NY, the regular rainfall and the typical February freeze even in warm years can do a lot of damage to a chimney even over the course of a normal year. Add that to the possibility of significant chimney-related disasters like lightning or flue fires or birds settling in over the summer, and you've got a lot that can go wrong.

That's why everyone who owns their own house and has a chimney should get an annual chimney inspection, generally right at the end of the summer before the rainy season begins. In most cases, you'll pay the low double-digits for someone to come out, take a look at your chimney, and tell you everything's fine.

But on those occasions when something is wrong, you'll be glad you invested in this little bit of insurance, because there are only two kinds of chimney repair on Long Island: the preventative kind and the expensive kind. An annual chimney exam will keep you in the preventative zone.

If you don't keep up (or a significant disaster occurs), you'll find yourself needing to pay out for a repair. The most common chimney parts that need fixing up are:

• The Chimney Caps • The Mortar Crown • The Firebox • The Damper • The Flue • The Storm Collar • The Flashing

Chimney caps restrict water, animals and debris from getting into your chimney and causing problems. They also keep sparks in, which is good for not having a fire on your roof.

Mortar crowns are concrete constructions that keep water out of your flue. Cracks in mortar crowns are the most common cause of water leaks into your attic or ceilings.

The firebox is the place where you actually build the fire. Problems here can lead to minor annoyances like your house burning down.

The damper keeps the flue closed when fireplace isn't in use. More importantly, it keeps the heat from escaping straight out the chimney, so if yours is broken, your fireplace will be primarily a pretty light and not so good for warming your home.

The flue lets smoke and other nastiness out while working with the damper to keep the heat in. Flues often collect creosote and other flammability on them, and need to be cleaned regularly.

The storm collar is a series of sheet metal plates up top that shunt water that's running down your chimney away from the area where it meets the roof. If it gets bent by a tree branch or something, it can cause leakage into your ceiling.

Flashing is the lining on the inside of your chimney that protects the mortar from the heat and chemicals that flow up your chimney. Flashing can crack and fail, leading to structural weakness along your entire chimney. It's probably the single most important part of your chimney.

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The world is full of a lot of really bad chimney companies, but Long Island doesn't have to worry so much. There may be a few hacks around the LI that aren't entirely on the up and up, but most every chimney sweep and guy who does chimney flue repair in LI is legit.

That's actually a kind of rare thing -- there's a reason that the chimney industry has kind of a bad rap. In south Chicago, for example, almost 7 out of 10 chimney repair companies are hacks. They don't have licenses, they're not bonded, and if they screw things up worse than they already were, you find that their phone number has been disconnected, their website is down, and you have no way of getting your money back.

Around Long Island, however, there's a certain pride in being a chimney guy. Maybe it's because homeowners around here take more pride in their houses. Maybe it's because there's just a higher level of competition, so we all have to stay on our A games.

If you're worried about getting a chimney repair company that can do the job right, don't. It's really not that difficult to tell the professionals from the hacks. A few years ago, all you needed was a listing in the phone book to know that an LI chimney repairman was legit, but today you need a couple of extra steps.

First of all, don't trust referrals that the company itself gives you. They might be paying their aunt Zlevzya to claim to be a satisfied customer. If you can get a review from someone you know, it's as good as gold. Other than that, you have to ask them directly to produce the paperwork. If they pull out proof of bonding, a certificate or license to do chimney work in New York State, and insurance, you can generally feel confident about working with them.

If you're still not comfortable, don't hesitate to collect information from several different companies and then go with the one you get the best feeling about. A little work up front can save you a lot of pain later.

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When you have a steady leak into your living room and it's coming from the area around your firplace, you've probably got a chimney brick loose. Long Island chimney repairmen are the perfect men for the job. But let's start at the beginning.

Water gets into your house, and it wreaks havoc. Even a small steady leak -- even one that only happens when it rains -- can loosen mortar joints, crack brick, warp wood, rust ferrous metals, encourage mold to grow, and eventually even crack your entire foundation.

That's bad.

A single loose brick in the wrong part of your chimney can cause exactly that kind of a leak. Some kid knocks a softball into the side of your chimney and the next thing you know, every time it rains the musty smell gets a little stronger. You'd never realize where it came from if you didn't climb up on the roof and inspect the chimney yourself. Now you have no idea what to do about it.

That's bad.

Then, you remember: there are professionals out there who do chimney repair -- Long Island has several! But how do you know which one to call? Well, the same way you find any new business or contractor. You ask around, see if anyone you know and trust has had a good experience. If no one you talk to regularly has, you check online. Each company you come across, you look up on Facebook, LinkedIn, Yelp, and search.Twitter.

When you find a few companies that seem promising, you talk to each of them and find the one you're most comfortable with. They come out, fix up your loose chimney brick, and re-seal some cracks in your flashing as well -- and you didn't even know what a flashing was before you met them!

Now, you've gotten the water damage repaired. There's no more musty smell, no more dry rot in your ceiling, and you get your chimney inspected by the repairmen once a year right before the rainy season stars so that you can be sure it'll never happen again.

And that's good.

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Your typical chimney cleaning Long Island company has a staggering variety of specialized tools that they bring to any job. Actually, depending on how you look at it, you could say that they only have two or three, but that's kind of like saying that a professional chef has "knives" and leaving it at that. In order to understand the tools, you have to start with an understanding of why the tools exist.

Creosote is a nasty substance that builds up on the inside of your chimney flue. It can slow down the flow of air through the chimney, making your fireplace smoky -- and it can also light on fire itself, causing massive wear on the chimney and possible a house fire! Experts recommending getting the creosote building professionally removed from your chimney once a year.

The primary tool used to accomplish that goal is the chimney brush, which looks very much like a very long and very wiry (and very large) cotton swab. But unlike your typical Q-Tip, a chimney brush has a removable head and comes with a myriad of various brushes. Some are circular, some are square, some are ovoid -- and each shape comes in a variety of sizes. That's because a brush that's too large won't fit in the chimney, while a brush that's too small or the wrong shape won't eliminate the buildup effectively. Chimney brushes have very stiff bristles, long extension rods, and are universally used from the top of the chimney.

For cleaning out the fireplace itself, another variety of smaller, handheld wire brushes come into ply. Among them is a scout brush, a two foot long brush designed for cleaning the smoke chamber; a wire duster brush that can get into all of the minute cracks and crevices in your fireplace and get the soot out; and a Millbury brush that is carefully designed to maximize it's ability to get the ashes and soot off of hearth itself.

All of these brushes don't even start to get into the tools that a chimney repair Long Island company might bring if you've got evidence that your chimney needs repair or repointing. With everything that they have at their disposal, it's no surprise that these companies get the job done right!

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It's not something that you hear very much about -- but there are some things about chimney repointing Long Island needs to know about. Chimney repointing (also called brick repointing) is critical to both the appearance and integrity of any home.

Bricks are the material used most frequently in Long Island chimneys, and for good reason. They look beautiful, they are quite stable even when extended upward for multiple stories, and they endure the heat of a wood fire quite easily. Of course, over time, the mortar can wear down, especially on the corners -- and once the mortar is gone, the once-crisp edges and corners of the brick become vulnerable to the erosive effects of weather and the hot-cold cycle of wintertime wood burning.

Chimney repointing is the art of repairing the worn and broken ends of the bricks in your chimney. Obviously, the best repair being prevention, the 'zeroth' thing to know about repointing is that you should do whatever you can to keep water and ice out of the joints between bricks in the first place. Suffice it to say, that's a very challenging prospect when you're talking about a chimney, so it's kind of ill-fated advice to give a typical homeowner.

It's Slow Work A single well-practiced individual with all of the relevant tools can repoint an area of about twenty square feet of brick surface per day. If you've got one of those chimneys that is mostly enclosed by the house and only has a small nubbin sticking up out of the roof, you can expect to have your repointing done in a day, but if your chimney stretches down the outside of the house, it'll take any chimney repair Long Island business a small team of people to get it done in a single afternoon.

It Takes Very Special Tools Not may typical Long Island homeowners have the tools they need to do any significant brick repointing on their own. Beyond the normal hammer, broom, and safety gear, brick repointing requires the use of an angle grinder with a diameter about half that of the thickness of the mortar being ground. You'll also need the right new mortar to put everything back in place once you've cleaned out the old stuff.

It Takes Very Special Knowledge Of course, the mortar itself is complex stuff -- too brittle, and it will need to be repointed again next season. Too fluid, and it won't set correctly. Fill in the joints improperly, and you'll create a haven for water and ice to get between the bricks and mess things up again. Work when it's too cold out, and the mortar will set too quickly to work with.


In short, what Long Island needs to know about chimney repointing is that there are professionals out there who can -- and should -- get the job done for you.

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