Chimney Inspections in Downey, CA

Chimney Inspections for Downey Homeowners

Downey built out around work. The Spanish Colonial and Mediterranean houses near the old downtown date from the 1920s and 1930s, and then the city filled in hard through the 1950s and 1960s to house the Rockwell and North American Aviation workforce that built the Apollo command module here. That means the bulk of Downey chimneys are sixty to seventy years old, single-flue, terracotta-lined masonry serving a fireplace that was a design feature of the ranch house rather than a heating appliance. They have been used lightly and maintained rarely, which is the profile that produces the surprises. What we find most often in the postwar tracts is crown failure: a thin trowelled mortar wash across the top with no overhang, cracked through decades ago, quietly feeding water into the stack ever since. The rusted damper underneath is usually the first symptom the homeowner notices. In the older Spanish houses nearer downtown the issue is more often the firebox itself, where original firebrick has spalled and the joints have opened.

1950s-60s aerospace-era ranch tracts with failed mortar crowns, and 1920s Spanish houses with spalled original fireboxes.

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.