Avoiding Chimney Fires: Crucial Prevention Tips

It could save lives if everyone with a fireplace knew about avoiding winter chimney fires: crucial prevention tips. Never ignite the first fire of a new wintertime season without prior consideration for safety. Chimney fires are common events, and they are often disastrous. Lives are lost and over $125 million in property damage occurs annually from 25,000-plus reported chimney fires in the U.S. every year. Crucial chimney fire prevention tips follow.

Schedule Annual Chimney Inspections

It is imperative to schedule a chimney inspection every year, according to widely recognized leaders in fire safety. Hire professional chimney sweeps to conduct these inspections. For example, at A-1 Chimney Specialist LLC, the chimney technicians are Certified Chimney Professionals. Because the industry is unregulated, it is paramount to verify the qualifications of any chimney sweep you hire. In Middle Tennessee and the Tennessee Valley, many homeowners rely on the trusted experts at A-1 for avoiding winter chimney fires and crucial prevention tips.

Schedule Professional Chimney Cleaning

Did you know that avoiding winter chimney fires: crucial prevention tips sometimes begin with dispelling myths? Although chimney-cleaning myths should have been dispelled by now, many still fall prey to them. Check out these myth-busting facts:

• Chimney cleaning and inspection are needed, even if you don’t use the fireplace.
• Stainless steel chimneys require maintenance, the same as all chimney liners.
• Do-it-yourself chimney cleaning is not safe, easy, or quite good enough.
• People cannot slide down the chimney as Santa Claus does.
• Burning chimney cleaning logs does not replace the need for professional chimney cleaning.

Keep An Eye Out for Trouble

There are things you can be on the lookout for, as concerns avoiding winter chimney fires: crucial prevention tips, such as:

• You are struggling to get fires started.
• The fumes from fires are not going up the chimney as they should.
• Black soot is staining the top of your exterior chimney.
• Between fires, you can smell a strong odor of creosote.

It also helps to be able to recognize signs that a chimney fire has already occurred, such as:

• Warped metal fireplace and chimney components
• The roof structure is heat-damaged near the chimney
• There is ashy, honeycombed, or fluffy-looking creosote in the flue
• The exterior chimney masonry is cracked
• Creosote chunks have fallen inside on the outside of the chimney or inside the fireplace

Contact A-1 Chimney to Avoid Chimney Fires

Enjoy your fireplace more than ever this winter by giving your peace of mind a big boost. In the back of your mind, you likely know that “avoiding winter chimney fires: crucial prevention tips” isn’t something that happens automatically.

The pros at A-1 Chimney Specialist are ready to help. Our friendly chimney techs have training, skill, and experience in performing chimney inspections, chimney cleaning, masonry repair, fireplace installation, flashing repair and installation, and any type of fireplace and chimney maintenance needed.

Aren’t sure your fireplace is entirely safe? Contact A-1 today by calling us in Tennessee at 931-967-3595 or in Alabama at 256-285-4895.