Home Inspection Services

A chimney is a structure for venting hot flue gases or smoke from a boiler, stove, furnace or fireplace to the outside atmosphere. Chimneys are typically vertical, or as near as possible to vertical, to ensure that the gases flow smoothly, drawing air into the combustion in what is known as the stack effect. The space inside a chimney is called a flue. Chimneys may be found in buildings, steam locomotives and ships. In the US, the term smokestack is also used when referring to locomotive chimneys. The term funnel is generally used for ships' chimneys and sometimes to refer to locomotive chimneys. Chimneys are tall to increase their draw of air for combustion and to disperse pollutants in the flue gases over a greater area so as to reduce the pollutant concentrations in compliance with regulatory or other limits. Chimney caps, flue, bricks dampers, clean outs, screen and, spark-aresters are all part of a good inspection. However if you can not see down the entire flue and the owner has no documentation of a sweep in the past year, it would be best to request a level two video inspection.


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