Chimney Sweeping in Pinetop-Lakeside, AZ

What Falls In Is as Much of a Problem as What Goes Up

Pinetop and Lakeside sit under a closed ponderosa canopy, and ponderosa sheds continuously - needles, cones, bark plates, the lot. An open flue, or one under a cap that has worked loose, collects that for the entire summer while nobody is at the cabin.

What we pull out in September is not soot. It is a compressed plug of pine needles, sometimes a foot of it, occasionally with a bird's nest on top. It blocks the flue, it is a fire load sitting directly above a firebox, and none of it is visible from the living room. The first fire of the season in a cabin with a needle-packed flue is exactly the call nobody wants to make.

Cold Starts Do the Rest

The deposits themselves are worse here than in a house heated straight through. Every cold lighting condenses moisture in a flue that has not come to temperature, and a cabin used ten weekends a season does that ten separate times. The result is the tarry second-stage glaze that comes out of cool fires - which takes mechanical work to remove and takes longer than most owners expect for a chimney they think is barely used.

We price on what is in the flue, not on what you think you burned, and we photograph it so the number makes sense to somebody sitting in Phoenix.

Sweep Before the First Fire

The practical version: on a Pinetop cabin, book the sweep for when you open the place, not for when something smells wrong. Shoulder season access is good, the roads are dry, and if we find something that needs a part there is time to get one up the hill.

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