Chimney sweep and masonry repair in Momence, IL

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

Momence chimneys: old brick on the river

Momence is the kind of town where a film crew shows up to shoot a period piece, and the downtown historic district that stood in for 1930s Chicago in Road to Perdition has chimneys just as old. The homes between the two river channels and around Island Park were built when a chimney was expected to vent a coal stove or an open fireplace burning soft wood, and the flues were either unlined or lined with early clay tile. Ninety years of freeze and thaw on the Kankakee River have opened those joints. We regularly find flues in Momence where the camera shows daylight through a tile joint into the chimney cavity.

The other Momence pattern is the wood stove. Riverside cottages that started as summer places and became year-round homes very often have a stove connected to a chimney that was never meant for one, sometimes through a thimble into an unlined flue. Those are the installations that cause chimney fires, and they are also the easiest to fix properly with an insulated stainless liner sized to the stove. During Gladiolus Festival week in August we are out on Momence roofs doing exactly that, while the weather is warm and the burning season is still months away.

What a camera sees in a ninety-year-old tile flue

Clay flue tiles are two-foot sections stacked and mortared inside the chimney. The tiles themselves are durable; the mortar between them is not. It is a thin joint, it takes the full heat of every fire and the full moisture of every rain that comes down the flue, and in a chimney with no cap it has been wet for most of a century. When we run the camera up a Momence flue the first thing we look at is those joints. Missing mortar shows as a dark ring; a shifted tile shows as a ledge, often with creosote piled on it; a cracked tile shows as a vertical line that may open and close as the chimney heats. Any one of those means the flue is no longer a continuous barrier between the fire and the house framing, and NFPA 211 is clear that it should not be used until it is repaired or relined.

We also look at the offsets, the places where the flue jogs sideways to clear a beam or a second fireplace. Offsets are where tiles were cut and fitted on site, and they are where joints fail first. A flue that looks fine for the first fifteen feet can have a completely open joint at the offset. That is why a flashlight from the firebox is not an inspection, and why every Level 2 we do in Momence includes the full-length scan and the stills in the report.

Services in Momence

All seven services at published prices, no travel charge, scheduled from Bourbonnais.

• Chimney sweeping
• Level 1 and Level 2 inspections
• Masonry repair — crown, tuckpointing and partial rebuilds on river-town brick
• Stainless relining — most Momence chimneys older than 1940 need one before a stove or insert goes in
• Caps, crowns and dampers
• Gas fireplace tune-ups
• Dryer vent cleaning

Local links for Momence

Momence resources: City of Momence · Momence High School