Chimney Sweep & Repair in Encino, CA

Serving Encino

Encino houses are, on average, the largest we work on in the Valley, and that changes the shape of a typical job. Where a Van Nuys ranch has one firebox, an Encino property south of Ventura frequently has three or four — a formal living room fireplace, one in the family room, one in the primary bedroom, and sometimes an outdoor hearth as well. Several of those often terminate in a single large stack, each with its own flue running up alongside the others. Multi-flue stacks are their own discipline. The flues have to be kept separate for their whole length or one appliance will spill into another's, and the divider — the wythe — is exactly the part that degrades quietly and invisibly. When a customer tells us they can smell the family room fire in an upstairs bedroom, a failed wythe is the first thing we look for, and it only shows up on camera. Crowns on these stacks are also large, which means more surface to crack and more water finding its way in when they do. The second Encino characteristic is remodelling. A great many of these homes have been substantially reworked, sometimes more than once, and fireplaces get moved, converted, closed off or added during that process. We routinely find gas log sets dropped into fireboxes that were never reassessed for the change, and flues that were abandoned during a remodel but left open at the top. North of Ventura the picture is more conventional — solid post-war tract on flat lots, much like the neighbouring parts of the Valley — and the work there is the standard annual sweep and inspection. The Encino Reservoir side and the streets climbing toward Mulholland are where the complicated stacks are, and where an inspection is genuinely worth booking before a first fire of the season rather than after something smells wrong.

Large homes with multiple fireboxes and shared multi-flue stacks south of Ventura; conventional post-war tract to the north. Wythe failure between adjacent flues is a recurring find. Heavy remodelling history means abandoned and converted flues are common.