What We Do

Which One Do You Actually Need?

Most calls sort into four situations, and they are cheapest to get right in a different order than people expect.

If you burn wood and it has been a year, you want a sweep. That includes a Level 1 inspection of the flue, crown and cap at no extra charge, which is the point - you find out the condition of a century-old stack as part of the visit rather than paying separately to be told.

If the dryer now takes two cycles to do what it used to do in one, that is vent work, not chimney work. Butte's older houses put the laundry in the basement, which means long duct runs to an exterior wall, and long runs are what fill up. We measure airflow before and after so the result is a number rather than a claim.

Air duct cleaning is the one we talk people out of most often. It is genuinely worth doing after a remodel, a purchase, or a smoke event. On a system with none of those behind it, usually it is not, and we would rather say so on this page than at your kitchen table.

And relining is the expensive one, so here is the honest frame. Uptown and Walkerville are full of stacks built between 1890 and 1920 around coal, many with no clay liner at all because that was normal construction then. Those flues now carry gas furnaces and modern airtight stoves - different size, different exhaust temperature, and in the case of high-efficiency gas, acidic condensate that eats lime mortar from the inside. That mismatch, not damage, is what drives most of the lining we do. It is also true that plenty of these chimneys were beautifully built and are perfectly sound, so age on its own is not a finding. The camera is.

If your situation is none of those, describe it. We would rather answer a question free than sell the wrong service.