Chimney Sweeping in Signal Hill, CA

Chimney Sweeping for Signal Hill Homeowners

Signal Hill is small, and it is unlike anywhere else we work. The city sits on a genuine hill with a working oil field still on it, so you get 1920s bungalows on the lower slopes, newer hillside and view properties climbing the grade, and pumping units alongside residential streets. Two things drive our work here. The first is wind. The crest is exposed in every direction, and Santa Ana conditions put real load on anything standing above a roofline. We see caps lifted clean off flues in Signal Hill that were only ever friction-fitted, which is why we mechanically fix every cap we install up here. The second is access and slope. Steep driveways, split-level roofs and short setbacks mean roof work needs planning rather than improvising. The older bungalows below the crest have the same unlined and lightly-lined brick you find in adjacent Long Beach, and being this close to the water they get the same salt-air corrosion on caps, dampers and flashing.

Exposed hilltop wind loading, steep split-level roof access, and salt-air corrosion on older brick near the Long Beach line.

Almost nobody in Los Angeles County heats with a fireplace. People light ten or twenty fires a winter, on the handful of evenings that drop into the fifties, and assume that light use means no maintenance. It is precisely the wrong conclusion. Short, cool, smouldering fires never get the flue hot enough to carry volatiles out of the system, so they condense on the walls as glazed creosote — the hardest kind to remove and the easiest to ignite. Then there is the marine layer. From May through July the masonry here stays damp most mornings, and damp soot turns acidic and eats mortar joints from the inside where nobody looks. Add year-round bird and roof-rat activity and an uncapped flue that has sat open for a decade, and a great many chimneys in this county are carrying a season of nesting material on top of years of buildup.