Gas Fireplace Service in Torrance, CA

Gas Fireplace Service 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.

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.