Chimney Sweep & Repair in Glendale, CA

Serving Glendale

Glendale has some of the finest 1920s Spanish Colonial Revival housing in the region, and those houses came with fireplaces built as architectural set pieces — arched openings, decorative tilework, plastered chimney breasts running the full height of the room. Working on them is careful work. The decorative surrounds are frequently irreplaceable, the original firebrick is soft, and anything that involves opening up the structure needs to be planned so that what goes back looks like what came out. Geographically the city climbs hard. The Verdugo Mountains rise behind the northern neighbourhoods and the San Rafael Hills sit to the west, so a large share of Glendale addresses sit in or against a fire hazard severity zone. As in the Burbank foothills, spark arrestor condition drives the inspection, but Glendale adds a second factor: the canyons here funnel wind in a way the open Valley does not, and downdraught complaints are noticeably more common. A chimney that draws perfectly in still conditions can reverse when the wind sits in a particular quarter, and the fix is usually a wind-directional cap rather than anything to do with cleanliness. The hillside neighbourhoods also have the steepest and most awkward roofs we regularly work on, Chevy Chase Canyon and the streets above Kenneth Road in particular. Tile roofs are common up there and tile is unforgiving — walked on carelessly it cracks, and a cracked tile leaks long after we have gone. We plan access on those properties rather than improvising it. Lower Glendale, down toward the Los Angeles River and Atwater, is flatter and more mixed, with a good deal of post-war and multi-family stock and much more conventional chimneys. The work there looks like Valley work: annual sweeps, crowns, caps and the occasional reline. Glendale also has a large share of homes that have been owned by the same family for decades, and with them a fair number of fireplaces that were closed off at some point in the seventies or eighties and never reopened. Those are worth a look even if nobody intends to light them again. A sealed firebox with a live flue above it still takes on water, still attracts wildlife, and is occasionally still connected to a furnace or water heater that somebody reconnected to the same stack years later without much thought.

Exceptional 1920s Spanish Colonial Revival stock with irreplaceable decorative surrounds and soft original firebrick. Hillside neighbourhoods sit in fire hazard zones with steep tile roofs that need careful access. Canyon wind makes downdraught complaints notably common.