A fire place is not only beautiful, but can add a lot of value to your home. According to the National Association of Realtors, a fire place can add up to $12,000 in value for your home. But despite the benefits that a fire place can provide, fire places can at times be a difficult thing to maintain. Not only can the maintenance be difficult, but the consequences of a dirty chimney can be dire; 15,000 home fires are started each year due to fireplaces.
Obviously maintaining your chimney is extremely important, but many homeowners have lots of questions when it comes to chimney maintenance, such as how often should you clean a chimney, or many people ask how it is one can clean a chimney, or even where they can go to buy flue repair parts. Well, in order to answer these questions and more, here are a couple of tips.
First, get your chimney inspected and cleaned at least once a year by a professional. They will inspect your flue and flue liners to see if you might be needing any additional flue repair parts, they will make sure that no birds or other animals have nested up there, and that your chimney has no structural damage such as damage to the chimney liners. Using a professional is important because they have expertise in the field and, if needed, can get you cheaper flue repair parts.
Secondly, inspect your flue often. The flue of your chimney is one of the most important parts and is usually one of the most likely things to break, plus, flue repair parts are easy to find and can often times rectify the problem. In order to do this, open and close the flue several times and try to see if there are any problems performing this. Then visually inspected the flue. If it appears that anything is missing, you may need some flue repair parts in order for it to operate properly. Do not start a fire in it if you believe that the flue is missing any parts.