Gas Fireplace Service in Cerritos, CA

Gas Fireplace Service 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.

Gas is now the majority of what burns in Los Angeles County fireplaces, and it has quietly become the part of the trade with the least maintenance attention. People believe a gas fireplace is maintenance-free because there is no ash to sweep. In reality gas produces roughly a gallon of water vapour for every hundred thousand BTU, and that moisture condenses inside the flue and rusts dampers, liners and fireboxes from the inside. Then there is the log set itself. Ceramic logs are positioned by the manufacturer to specific coordinates, and a set that has been rearranged by a housekeeper, a previous owner or a well-meaning relative will burn with flame impingement and produce carbon monoxide and soot. We find rearranged log sets constantly. Add pilot assemblies clogged with fifteen years of dust in a dry, dusty basin climate, and thermocouples at the end of their life, and most gas fireplaces here are overdue rather than fine.