Chimney Inspections in Cerritos, CA

Chimney Inspections for Cerritos Homeowners

Cerritos is the most uniform housing stock we work in, and that makes it easy to predict. This was Dairy Valley until 1967, and what replaced the dairies was two decades of continuous tract building through to the mid-eighties. The consequence for us is that Cerritos is factory-built country. The great majority of these fireplaces are prefabricated metal units venting through a Class A metal chimney inside a framed and stuccoed chase, not full masonry. They fail completely differently. There is no mortar to repoint and no crown to recast; instead there is a galvanised sheet chase cover on top, and after forty years those have almost universally rusted, ponded and started leaking straight down inside the chase where nobody can see it. The water then rots the framing and corrodes the chimney sections. We replace a great many chase covers in stainless here. The other Cerritos issue is age of appliance: a 1978 factory-built firebox has a service life, and refractory panels that have cracked through are not repairable by patching.

1965-1985 tract housing, predominantly factory-built fireboxes in stuccoed chases with rusting galvanised chase covers.

An inspection is the only part of this trade that tells you something you could not otherwise know. A flue can look perfectly sound from the hearth and be cracked through two storeys up. That matters more here than in most of the country because of what the ground does. The 1987 Whittier Narrows earthquake put hairline shears through masonry across the Whittier and Pico Rivera area that have quietly widened ever since, and the Portuguese Bend slide is still moving under parts of Rancho Palos Verdes today. Add the ordinary rate of settlement in the postwar tracts built on old dairy and farm land in Cerritos, Artesia and Norwalk, and cracked flue tiles are common in houses that have never had a bad fire. We also do a lot of point-of-sale work. A Level 2 inspection is what a lender, an insurer or a careful buyer's agent will ask for, and a written report with photographs settles the question rather than starting an argument.