Chimney sweep and masonry restoration in Monee, IL

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

Old Monee and the estates

Walk the blocks above the Illinois Central cut in Old Monee and the chimneys tell you the age of every house. Some of them served the summer homes of Chicago families, like the Furst estate with its coach house and rose garden, and they were built with care: corbeled tops, decorative courses, two or three flues. A century and a half of freeze and thaw has opened their joints, and the wrong repair, a hard grey mortar smeared over soft brick, has damaged some of them more than the weather did. Restoration work here means matching the mortar, matching the brick, and reproducing the joint profile so the repair belongs on the house.

The subdivisions to the west and south are on big lots with big houses, and most have a factory-built fireplace or two, a direct-vent gas unit in the family room and sometimes a wood-burning unit in a basement or great room. The chase covers on the 1990s homes are at the rusting-through stage. The dryer vents run a long way to reach an outside wall on a large footprint. And the Monee Reservoir a few minutes away means a good number of these homeowners burn wood on winter weekends and want the flue swept before they do.

Services in Monee

All seven services at published prices, grouped with Crete, University Park and Beecher. No travel charge.

• Chimney sweeping
• Level 1 and Level 2 inspections
• Masonry repair — restoration tuckpointing and rebuilds in Old Monee
• Stainless relining
• Caps, crowns and dampers — stainless chase covers in the estate subdivisions
• Gas fireplace tune-ups
• Dryer vent cleaning

Matching mortar on a landmarked chimney

Matching mortar is three decisions. The first is strength. Brick from the 1850s through the 1920s is soft and the mortar it was laid in was lime-based and softer still. A modern Type S mortar tests at more than three times the compressive strength of that lime mortar and is harder than the brick; it will transfer every stress into the brick face and spall it. For Old Monee work we use a lime-rich Type O or, at most, Type N, chosen after we test how the existing brick and mortar behave. The second decision is color and texture. Mortar color comes from the sand as much as the binder, and old mortars used local sand with a coarser, more varied grain than modern bagged mix. We match by pulling a sample, cleaning it, and building a mix that dries to the same color and grain, then letting a test patch cure for a week before we commit.

The third decision is the joint. Original joints on these homes were tooled in a specific profile: flush, concave, grapevine, raked, or a beaded joint on the fancier work. Reproducing it is what makes a repair disappear. It takes the right tool and someone who has done it before. The reward is a chimney that looks like it was never touched and that will not need touching again for a generation. That is the standard we hold ourselves to on any Monee house old enough to have a plaque.

Local links for Monee

Monee resources: Village of Monee · Crete-Monee High School