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10 Holiday Fireplace Safety Tips for East Aurora, NY Homes Holiday fireplace safety is not really about the fireplace. The equipment in December is the same equipment that behaved itself all November. What changes is everything around it: a dried-out tree four feet...

Carbon Monoxide From a Fireplace: Warning Signs and Prevention for Buffalo, NY Homes Carbon monoxide from a fireplace is the hazard you cannot detect yourself. No color, no smell, no taste, and early symptoms that look so much like winter flu that people and sometimes...

7 Signs of a Chimney Fire Every Orchard Park, NY Homeowner Should Know The image most people have of a chimney fire is dramatic: a roaring sound, flames above the roofline, neighbors calling the fire department. That version happens, and it is the minority. Far more...

Efflorescence on Chimney Brick: What Those White Stains Mean for Your Buffalo, NY Home White powdery staining on chimney brick looks like a cleaning problem and is not one. Efflorescence is a deposit left behind by water that has moved through the masonry and...

A leaning chimney is one of the few home problems that is exactly as serious as it looks. Masonry does not tilt for cosmetic reasons. Something underneath it has moved, or something inside it has deteriorated, and the structure is now carrying its weight along a line...

The complaint arrives every July. Nobody has lit a fire since February, the fireplace has been sitting cold for months, and the living room smells like a wet campfire. A chimney smell that appears in summer and disappears in winter seems backwards, but it follows a...

A chimney can look perfectly solid from the ground and still be quietly failing. The bricks hold their shape, the structure stands upright, and nothing looks obviously wrong until water finds its way in, a joint crumbles under pressure, or a mason gets up on the roof...

A stuck or corroded chimney damper can raise your heating bills by hundreds of dollars a year. Most homeowners never think about this small metal component until something goes wrong, and by then, cold air is pouring into the living room, or worse, smoke is backing up...

Most homeowners notice the damage after the water is already inside. A rust-colored stain on the ceiling near the fireplace, a damp smell in the attic after a thaw, or deteriorating drywall on an interior wall. By that point, the flashing has probably been failing...

Buffalo averages over 90 inches of snow annually, and that number does not account for the freeze-thaw cycles, ice storms, and lake-effect punishment that hit chimneys harder than almost any other part of a home. Most homeowners think about roofing, gutters, and...