Chimney Caps & Crown Repair
The cheapest repair on a chimney, and the one that prevents the expensive ones. A cap keeps water, animals and embers where they belong.
on site
included
The cap
A chimney cap is a stainless or copper hood with mesh sides that sits over the top of the flue. It does three jobs: it keeps rain out of the flue, it keeps animals and birds from nesting inside it, and its spark arrestor mesh keeps burning embers from landing on your roof.
An uncapped flue is an open pipe pointing at the sky. Every rainfall goes down it. On the wooded streets in Livingston and Wayne, so do squirrels and chimney swifts. A nest is a complete blockage sitting directly above your firebox, which means combustion gases have nowhere to go but back into the room.
The crown
The crown is the sloped slab at the very top of the chimney that covers the masonry around the flue. A properly built crown is cast concrete with a slope, an overhang past the brick, and a drip edge so water falls clear rather than running down the face.
Most chimneys built before about 1950 don't have one. They have a mortar wash — a thin skim of mortar troweled over the top — and mortar wash cracks. Once it cracks, water goes into the space between the flue liner and the brick, where nobody can see it, and freeze-thaw does the rest. A cracked crown is the single most common thing we photograph on inspections in Nutley and Montclair.
Chase covers
If you have a factory-built fireplace, the equivalent part is the chase cover — the metal lid on top of the framed chase. Older ones are galvanized steel and they rust through from the inside. When they do, water pours straight into the chase and rots the framing. We replace them in stainless so it doesn't happen twice. This is the most common repair we do in Livingston.
What happens on the visit
- We protect your floor and hearth before anything else
- A camera goes in the flue, bottom to top — not a flashlight
- We check the firebox, damper, smoke shelf and the crown above the roofline
- We confirm which appliances vent into which flue
- You get a written report with photographs the same day
Book Chimney Cap & Crown
Inspection $49 · Cleaning $99
Chimney Cap & Crown questions
Straight answers
What does a cap actually stop?
Rain, snow, birds and squirrels, and embers on the way out. It's the cheapest thing on a chimney and it prevents most of the expensive things.
How do I know if my cap is missing or damaged?
You usually can't see it from the ground. That's why it turns up on the $49 inspection. Water stains on the chimney breast and animal noise behind the fireplace are the two symptoms that get people to call.
What is the crown, and is it the same as the cap?
No. The crown is the sloped concrete or mortar surface on top of the brickwork; the cap sits above the flue opening. The crown sheds water off the stack, and when it cracks the water goes into the masonry instead.
Do you've to be on the roof for this?
Yes, both the cap and the crown are above the roofline. That's also why they get ignored for years.
Where we work
New Jersey
Statewide