Chimney sweep and gas fireplace service in Manteno, IL

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

Two kinds of Manteno chimneys

Drive from the Oktoberfest carnival grounds downtown out toward the Diversatech industrial park and you pass through both of Manteno’s housing eras in ten minutes. The older homes near Main Street and the tracks have real brick chimneys, many of them with tile liners that are now eighty or ninety years old. Those need the classic work: sweeping, crown repair, tuckpointing, and occasionally a liner when the tiles have cracked. The village’s grain elevator is the tallest thing in town, and the chimneys on these older homes take the same open-prairie wind and driving rain it does.

The subdivisions that filled in after 1995 are a different job. Most have a direct-vent gas fireplace with a sealed glass front, and the calls are for pilots that will not stay lit, sooted glass and gas valves that have started to stick. The wood-burning units in those homes are factory-built, with round metal flues and chase covers that are reaching the end of their twenty-to-thirty-year life. We also do a steady run of dryer vents in Manteno because so many of these homes have the laundry on the second floor. The Illinois Veterans’ Home on the old state hospital grounds is a landmark we drive past on the way to the north-side streets.

Manteno services

Every service below is available in Manteno at the same price as in Bourbonnais.

• Chimney sweeping
• Level 1 and Level 2 inspections — including prefab and gas vent inspections
• Masonry repair
• Stainless relining
• Caps, crowns and dampers
• Gas fireplace tune-ups — the most common Manteno booking each fall
• Dryer vent cleaning

Direct-vent, B-vent and why the difference matters

A direct-vent gas fireplace is a sealed system. Combustion air comes in through the outer pipe of a coaxial vent and exhaust leaves through the inner pipe, so the fireplace never uses room air and never puts combustion gases into the room as long as the glass gasket and the vent joints are intact. That is why the glass on these units must be seated properly after cleaning and why we check the termination cap outside for nests and corrosion. A B-vent fireplace, by contrast, draws air from the room and vents through a chimney or single-wall pipe. It depends on a good draft and a clear flue, and it can spill exhaust into the room if the flue is blocked or the house is under negative pressure from a range hood or bath fan.

In Manteno’s newer subdivisions almost everything is direct-vent, and the maintenance question is the thermopile, the small generator heated by the pilot that keeps the gas valve open. When it weakens the fireplace lights, runs for a while and shuts down, or refuses to light on cold nights when the millivolts drop. We measure it with a meter during a tune-up and replace it before it strands you at Thanksgiving. In the older homes downtown with gas log sets in masonry fireplaces, the chimney still has to be inspected like a wood-burning flue and the damper must be clamped open.

Local links for Manteno

Manteno resources: Village of Manteno · Manteno High School