Chimney sweep and dryer vent cleaning in Bradley, IL

By Jacob Dove, founder of Friendship Chimney Sweep · 29 years in the trade

Bradley houses and their chimneys

Bradley grew up as a factory town, and you can read that in the chimneys. The blocks south of West Broadway, where the Lighted Christmas Parade runs from Forest to Washington, are lined with worker houses from the plow works and stove plant days. Their chimneys are small, brick, usually one flue that once served a coal stove, and a surprising number were converted to vent a gas furnace and water heater decades ago without a liner. When the furnace was upgraded to a high-efficiency model the flue got cooler and wetter, and the mortar between the tiles started to go. We find these on Level 2 inspections all the time, often because the homeowner noticed rust flakes in the basement cleanout.

North and west, near Bradley-Bourbonnais Community High School and out toward the I-57 corridor, the homes are newer and the fireplaces are mostly factory-built units in framed chases. There the calls are for chase covers rusting through, cracked refractory panels, and dryer vents in second-floor laundry rooms that run twenty-five feet before they reach daylight. The CSL Behring campus brought a lot of shift workers to town, and a good share of our Bradley bookings are evenings and weekends, which is why we keep the phone on until 9pm.

Services in Bradley

Everything on the list below is bookable in Bradley at published prices, often the same day.

• Chimney sweeping
• Level 1 and Level 2 inspections
• Masonry repair
• Stainless relining
• Caps, crowns and dampers — stainless chase covers for prefab chimneys
• Gas fireplace tune-ups
• Dryer vent cleaning — second-floor laundry runs are the common Bradley job

Why a furnace flue rots from the inside

An old masonry chimney was designed for hot exhaust. Coal and older gas furnaces sent gases up at several hundred degrees, hot enough to stay above their dew point all the way out the top. A modern mid- or high-efficiency furnace pulls much more heat out of the exhaust before it leaves, so the gases are cool. In a big, cold masonry flue they condense on the way up. The condensate is acidic, because combustion products include sulfur and nitrogen compounds, and it soaks into the mortar joints between the clay tiles and eats them. Over a few winters the joints open, tiles shift, and pieces fall to the bottom of the flue. If enough debris collects, or a tile drops across the flue, the furnace exhaust backs into the basement.

The signs are white staining on the outside of the chimney, rust or grit in the cleanout door, and a furnace that short-cycles or trips its rollout switch. The fix is a properly sized stainless liner in an alloy rated for condensing exhaust, usually AL29-4C, with the water heater either sharing the liner if the sizing allows or getting its own. It is one of the most important jobs we do in Bradley’s older grid, and it is invisible until someone runs a camera.

Local links for Bradley

Bradley resources: Village of Bradley · Bradley-Bourbonnais Community High School