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The truck carries a rod-and-brush set in several head sizes, a HEPA shop vacuum, drop cloths and a firebox seal, a flexible camera on a pole for looking up the flue, mirrors and lights, and a gas service kit with a manometer, soft brushes and a leak detector. On a typical visit we lay the cloths, seal the opening, and set the vacuum running before anything else moves. Then we look. The camera goes up the flue first, because what we see decides whether the brushes come out at all. If deposits are light and the flue is clear, we say so and skip the sweep. We clear the smoke shelf and firebox, check the damper, pull nests and debris, and go up top to look at the cap, crown and flashing. For a gas unit the order changes: we pull and inspect the log set, check placement against the burner, read the vent run for corrosion and blockage, and verify the pilot and burner behavior. We work on open masonry fireplaces, factory-built prefabs, and sealed gas inserts, including Heatilator, Heat & Glo, Majestic, Napoleon, Superior and Empire. We handle sweeping, inspection, caps, liners, flues, fireboxes and gas fireplace work. We do not do masonry or brickwork, and we will tell you when that is what you need.

Central Florida burning reality: a 10-20 night season, not a 5-month one. The chimney problems here are driven by idle time and weather, not by creosote volume. Chimneys that sit unused eleven months a year become nesting sites: chimney swifts (federally protected, cannot be removed while nesting), squirrels, raccoons, wasps, and in this part of Florida, rat snakes following the rodents. That is the call we get most in Lakeland: noise in the chase, an odor, or something that came down into the firebox. Unlined or uncapped flues take in heavy summer rain; 50-plus inches a year, much of it in short intense thunderstorm downpours, which saturates brick, rusts dampers, and stains interior firebox walls. Lightning is a factor. The I-4 corridor has among the highest lightning flash densities in the United States, and strikes crack masonry crowns and blow out mortar. Hurricane and tropical-storm wind loads loosen caps and lift flashing, so the fall calls are often a cap that is gone or a flue that now takes water. Many homes built since the 1990s have sealed gas log sets or vented gas inserts with B-vent or direct-vent terminations, converted from original wood-burning prefabs; those need inspection for vent corrosion, blockage and gas log placement rather than sweeping. Because use is so low, most households here need inspection and animal/debris removal annually and actual sweeping far less often. The honest recommendation is an annual Level 1 inspection with sweeping only when deposits warrant.

On cost, the thing that moves the number most on a chimney sweep here is what we find on the roof and inside the flue, not the sweeping itself. A clear flue with a sound cap is a short visit. An active nest changes it, and a swift nest in season changes it more, because we cannot touch it and have to schedule the removal and cap afterward. Water damage adds work: a rusted damper, a stained or spalled firebox, or a liner that has been taking rain for years. Height and roof pitch matter, and so does access, since a chase on a two-story with a steep pitch takes longer to reach safely than a single-story masonry stack. Gas units price differently again, because the time goes into the vent run and log set rather than the brushes. If the inspection turns up a cracked crown, a failed liner or a cap that will not survive the next storm, we walk you through the repair work we can do and name the parts we cannot. Call us, tell us whether you burn wood or gas, and we will tell you what the visit will involve before we show up.