Chimney Relining in Torrance, CA

Chimney Relining for Torrance Homeowners

Torrance covers more chimney history than any other city on our list except Long Beach. Old Torrance was laid out in 1912 to an Olmsted brothers plan as a planned industrial town, and the brick houses that survive from that period are among the oldest structures we work on. Then come the enormous postwar tracts of the 1950s that filled the centre of the city, and the Hollywood Riviera and Walteria on the coastal side. The Riviera is where the work changes character: those properties take direct marine exposure, and the combination of salt air and near-constant humidity is hard on everything ferrous at the top of a chimney. We replace corroded caps, chase covers and flashing there constantly. Inland, in Southwood and the central tracts, the issue is more ordinary — 1950s crowns that were never more than a mortar wash, now cracked through. The Old Torrance brick is the interesting end of it, frequently unlined or lightly lined, and worth a camera survey before anyone lights a fire in it.

1912 Olmsted-planned brick in Old Torrance, 1950s tract crowns, and direct marine exposure in the Hollywood Riviera.

A liner is what stands between the fire and the timber framing of your house, and a large number of chimneys in this county do not have a working one. Anything built here before about 1930 — much of Old Torrance, Uptown Whittier, the Long Beach bungalow neighbourhoods — was commonly built with no liner at all, just brick against brick. Later houses got terracotta tile, which is sound until the ground moves, and the ground here moves. Cracked and displaced tiles are the single most common serious defect we find on camera. The other driver is appliance change. Every gas conversion, every wood stove and every fireplace insert changes the volume and the temperature of what the flue has to carry, and an original masonry flue is nearly always far too large for a modern appliance. An oversized flue runs cool, which condenses acidic moisture inside the chimney and destroys it from within faster than any fire would.