Chimney Relining & Liner Repair

The Most Common Relining Job in This County Has Nothing to Do With Damage

It is a sizing problem, and it starts with a decision somebody made years earlier for sensible reasons.

A great many houses around Show Low and Pinetop were built between the mid-seventies and the late nineties with a large open masonry fireplace and a clay flue sized to match it - commonly 12 by 12 inches, sometimes larger. That is correct for an open fire, which needs a lot of flue to carry a lot of cool, dilute smoke.

Then, somewhere along the line, the owner got tired of watching the heat go up the chimney and fitted an insert or a freestanding stove in front of the opening. A wood insert vents through a 6-inch collar. A pellet appliance vents through 3 or 4 inches. Both of those are now trying to push a small volume of hot exhaust up a flue with four to six times the cross-section they were designed for.

What happens next is predictable. The exhaust expands, slows and cools long before it reaches the top. Cool exhaust condenses. Condensate on a cold clay wall is exactly the recipe for the hard glazed creosote we describe on the sweeping page - which is why some of the worst flues we open belong to people who burn very little. Meanwhile the appliance never drafts the way the manual promises, so the owner concludes the stove is a bad stove.

A correctly sized insulated liner from the appliance collar to the top of the stack fixes the draft, the creosote rate and the cold-start smell in one go. It is also what the appliance manufacturer's listing required in the first place - almost every insert and stove sold in the last thirty years specifies a continuous liner to the termination, and an installation without one is outside its listing.

What's Included

Flue measured at the top and at the appliance - not estimated from the outside of the stack
Camera run down the existing flue where access allows, footage handed over either way
316Ti or 304 stainless liner sized to the appliance, insulated where clearance requires it
Top plate, storm collar and rain cap fitted and sealed
Appliance connector and tee made up properly, no foil tape holding the system together
Written record of what went in, including the liner spec, for your insurer

A Cracked Tile Is Not the Same Failure as a Cracked Crown

These get confused constantly, including by people selling the repair, so it is worth being precise. The crown is the concrete slab on top of the stack. When it cracks, water gets into the masonry, and that is a waterproofing and crown job.

The liner is the clay or stainless tube running up the inside, and it has one function: keep combustion gas and heat away from the timber framing that is often only two inches away. When a clay tile cracks or a joint opens, that separation is gone. Flue gas at temperature now has a path into a wall cavity.

Up here the two failures are linked but not identical. Water arrives through a failed crown, gets between the tiles, and then our elevation does the rest - Show Low sits around 6,400 feet and Pinetop higher, and both run dozens of freeze-thaw cycles a winter rather than one long freeze. Every cycle levers the crack a little wider. Fixing the crown stops the water. It does not repair the tiles that already split, and no amount of sealant applied from outside reaches them.

Snowflake Has a Third Category

The oldest housing stock in Snowflake predates the idea of a flue liner entirely. Chimneys built in the 1880s and for decades afterwards are soft fired brick laid up in lime mortar, with the flue being simply the hole in the middle. There is no liner because nobody built them with one.

An unlined soft-brick chimney serving a modern airtight stove is the highest-risk configuration we come across, and it is not rare in that part of the county. The stove runs hotter and drier than anything the chimney was built for, the mortar joints have had a century to open, and the only thing between the fire and the structure is deteriorating brick. That is a lining job, not a sweeping job, and we will say so plainly rather than take the sweep money annually and say nothing.

Relining and liner repair by town

Chimney Relining & Liner Repair in Show Low Chimney Relining & Liner Repair in Pinetop-Lakeside Chimney Relining & Liner Repair in Snowflake

Flexible stainless steel chimney liner being lowered into a masonry flue

Told you need a liner?

Send the photo they showed you. We will tell you what it actually proves, free, before you book anything.

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What This Costs, and When We Tell People They Do Not Need It

Relining is the most expensive thing on this website and the easiest thing in the trade to sell to somebody who does not need it. So here are the numbers and the limits.

A straight, accessible flue taking an insulated stainless liner for a wood insert generally lands between $1,800 and $3,200. Offsets, very tall stacks, tile that has to come out before the liner goes in, or a full cast-in-place job push it higher - $4,000 and up is realistic on a difficult chimney. A short pellet vent reline is much less. We give a range on the phone and a firm number after the flue has been measured, never before.

Now the other direction. A sound clay-tile flue serving an open fireplace it was sized for does not need lining. Light surface pitting in an otherwise intact tile does not need lining. A single hairline crack in one tile is worth photographing and watching, not ripping out. If someone showed you a photograph of a dark line inside your flue and quoted you five figures the same afternoon, get the footage and a second opinion - and we will look at it for nothing whether or not you use us.

The one case where we do push is an unlined or badly cracked flue serving an appliance that is somebody's actual heat. That is not an upsell, and we would rather lose the argument politely than let it go unmentioned.

Questions About Chimney Relining & Liner Repair

How do I know if my chimney needs relining?

You generally cannot tell from the ground or the firebox - it takes a camera run or a Level 2 look at the flue interior. The indirect signs worth acting on are a stove that has never drafted properly, creosote building far faster than your burning explains, a smoke or campfire smell in the room on cold still days, and pieces of clay tile turning up in the firebox or on the smoke shelf.

I put a wood insert into my old fireplace. Do I have to line it?

Almost certainly yes, and not only for safety. Nearly every insert sold in the last thirty years is listed for use with a continuous liner to the top of the stack. Without one the installation sits outside the manufacturer's listing, the appliance will not draft as designed, and the oversized flue will glaze fast.

Stainless or cast-in-place?

Stainless for the large majority of jobs here - it is faster, it comes out and gets replaced if it ever needs to, and insulated stainless handles our freeze-thaw well. Cast-in-place has a place on badly deteriorated masonry that also needs structural help, but it is more expensive, more disruptive and permanent. We will tell you which one your chimney actually calls for.

How long does a stainless liner last?

A 316Ti liner correctly sized and insulated, burning seasoned wood, is generally a multi-decade component and usually carries a long manufacturer warranty. Undersized, uninsulated, or fed wet wood and it corrodes far sooner. Most liner failures we see are installation and fuel problems rather than material problems.

Can you reline in winter?

Usually yes, and this is the one job on our list that is not weather-blocked the way waterproofing is. The limit is the roof, not the temperature - we will not work a snow-loaded metal pitch, and in that case it waits for a clear window.