Chimney sweep and repair in Crete, IL

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

Services in Crete

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

• Chimney sweeping — annual sweeps for the wood-burning homes
• Level 1 and Level 2 inspections
• Masonry repair — tuckpointing, crowns and waterproofing on 1960s-80s exterior chimneys
• Stainless relining
• Caps, crowns and dampers
• Gas fireplace tune-ups
• Dryer vent cleaning

Crete, decade by decade

Crete started as Wood’s Corner in 1836, and the historical society museum on Exchange Street tells the story of the railroads and farms that grew it. The houses on Main Street between Exchange and Division have chimneys of that age: tall brick, tile-lined, in need of the crown and joint attention that any nineteenth-century chimney needs. The subdivisions that filled in from the 1960s through the 1980s have masonry fireplaces built to that era’s habits: exterior chimneys, thin crowns, galvanized caps, dampers that have rusted after fifty years. Those are the fireplaces we sweep and repair most often in Crete.

From about 1990 on the fireplaces are factory-built, and the calls are for chase covers, panels and gas tune-ups. Crete sits on the edge of the Goodenow Grove preserve and Plum Creek, and a lot of homeowners burn wood on winter weekends. The Crete Country Christmas parade downtown marks the start of the heavy fireplace season for us, and we try to have the annual sweeps done before it.

Waterproofing masonry: what works and what makes it worse

Brick and mortar are porous. In a dry climate that does not matter; in a Will County winter it is the whole problem. Water soaks into the face of an exterior chimney, freezes, expands about nine percent, and pops the face off the brick. Repeated over years, that is spalling, and it is how a 1970s Crete chimney ends up needing a partial rebuild. The instinct is to seal the brick, and the wrong sealer does real damage. Paint, acrylic sealers and anything that forms a film on the surface trap water inside the brick; it cannot dry out through the film, so it freezes behind it and the film peels off with the brick face attached. We see chimneys in Crete that were painted or film-sealed twenty years ago and are worse for it.

The right product is a breathable water repellent, a siloxane or silane-siloxane formulation. It penetrates the brick and lines the pores so liquid water beads and runs off, but water vapor still passes through, so the chimney can dry from the inside. It is applied to a clean, dry chimney, ideally after tuckpointing so the new mortar is protected from day one, and it lasts around ten years before it wants a fresh coat. On a Crete chimney that has just been repointed it is the single best way to make the repair last.

Local links for Crete

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