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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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