Chimney care for Collingswood Borough's prewar homes
Collingswood filled in fast once the trolley line along Haddon Avenue reached Camden, and the borough went from 1,633 residents in 1900 to 8,714 by 1920. Nearly half its homes were built before 1940, many of them Foursquares, Dutch Colonials and bungalows with one interior masonry chimney holding several flues.
In brief
We sweep, camera-inspect and repair chimneys on the blocks around Knight Park and along Haddon Avenue, and clean dryer vents and air ducts in the borough's houses, twins and duplexes. In an old stack with several flues, the first step is working out which flue serves which appliance.
One stack, several flues and a century of changes
The houses that went up here between about 1910 and 1930 were mostly builder designs on modest lots, and most carry a single masonry stack in the middle of the house. Inside that stack there may be a flue for the fireplace, one for the original coal boiler, and sometimes a third that nobody uses anymore. Over a hundred years the boilers changed to oil and then to gas, water heaters moved, and some flues were simply closed off and forgotten. An abandoned flue still lets in rain and animals and still connects to the living space. In the twins and duplexes, one stack often serves two households on either side of the party wall, and a crack between flues can let exhaust from one home reach the other. About 5 percent of households still burn fuel oil and roughly 74 percent use gas, so we also see plenty of old coal flues now venting a gas appliance far smaller than the opening was built for.
Neighborhoods on our route in Collingswood Borough
- Collingswood Commercial Historic District
- Collingswood Residential Historic District
- Haddon Avenue corridor
- Knight Park
- Newton Creek
- the PATCO Speedline station area
Services we offer in Collingswood Borough
- Chimney sweepingCamera first, brushes second
- Chimney inspectionLevel 1 or Level 2, written up for you
- Chimney repairCrowns, caps, flashing and liners where water gets in
- Fireplaces & stovesPilots, dampers and door gaskets
- Dryer vent cleaningThe full run cleaned, dryer to outside hood
- Air duct cleaningIf cleaning will not help, we say so
- Duct repair & replacementCrushed, torn or sagging runs fixed
Reviews from our Google listing
A selection of our 5-star reviews on Google.
Polishing the ceramic glass and unblocking the air-wash intake passages turned our heavily used woodstove back into an effective heat source.
Static-cling barriers locked the aperture tight, so that high soot agitation inside the top flue never wandered into the next-door kitchen.
The entire sweep was completed with engineering precision and purity never before witnessed from meticulous pre-setup to HD inside camera feature.
What Collingswood Borough homeowners ask us
Our Foursquare has one chimney with three openings at the top. What are they?
Usually separate flues, one for the fireplace and others for heating equipment, some of it long gone. We trace each flue to what it serves today and tell you which ones are active, which should be capped and which need a liner.
We rent out half of our twin. Does that change anything for the chimney?
Each new tenancy needs the state smoke and carbon monoxide alarm certificate, and carbon monoxide alarms are required in any unit with a fuel-burning appliance. A chimney inspection between tenants is a sensible companion to that, especially when one stack serves both halves.
The old furnace flue has not been used for years. Can we just leave it?
It still needs a cap or a proper seal at the top, or rain keeps getting into the masonry and birds or squirrels can move in. We check that the flue is properly closed at both ends.
Do you also clean dryer vents in Collingswood?
Yes, and air ducts too. Either service can be booked by itself or added to a chimney visit.
Our listing on Google Maps
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Royal Chimney Sweep Repair Cherry Hill
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