Every home should have a chimney liner.

What is the role of the chimney liner?

The unit is designed to protect the heat transfer to combustible materials of your property from catching fire. According to chimney contractors, leaving your chimney exposed leads to the exposure of the chimney to acids that are harmful to it.

The gases created by the fireplace can be acidic when they get into contact with water, and they tend to destroy the chimney mortar if there is no barrier. The absence of a chimney liner also prevents leakages of harmful gases into the house.

For you to get the most from the chimney liner, you should ensure that it’s of the right size. If the unit is too small, the gases are bound to get back into the house causing smoking issues. On the other hand, if the liner is too large, the smoke will go up the chimney more slowly leading to the accumulation of large amounts of creosote.

Types of chimney liners

When you are looking to install the liners in your home or place of work, you should know that there are many types of chimney liners in the market that you can go for. The most common ones are:

Clay tile liners: They are the cheapest liners in the market and often preferred by a wide range of people. When properly installed and maintained, they can last up to 50 years. One of the things you should do is to clean them regularly.

Due to old age, it’s common for the liners to deteriorate. The most affected parts are the motor joints that lead to leakage of carbon monoxide in the house. For you to keep yourself and your family safe you need to fix the joints as soon as possible.

When installing the liners, you should note that you should only install them when you are constructing the chimney. You can retrofit them into an existing chimney, but you will face challenges when doing so.

Cast in place liners: Cast in place liners are formed from poured-cement processes. Properly installed liners are able to withstand all effects of heat, condensation, and acids.

This is because the units tend to have excellent insulation properties that not only increase the efficiency of the chimney, but also reduce the accumulation of creosote so that you don’t need to undertake chimney cleaning too often.

Compared to clay liners, cast-in-place liners are less invasive and laborious to install. The only thing that can make them a challenge to install is if your chimney is located at a challenging place. As you might have guessed, installing these liners isn’t a do-it-yourself job; therefore, you need to hire an expert to help you out.

Metal flue liners: These are usually made from stainless steel and often loved by many people due to their effectiveness at protecting the chimney from fire damage.

While the units are very effective, their main challenge is that they are very expensive to install; therefore, you need to have deep pockets for you to install them.

Other than stainless steel, the liners are made from other metals. For example, there are those made from iron and even copper. It’s up to you to choose the ones that are ideal for you.

How do you take care of the chimney liners?

For the liners to last for a long time and give you the service that you are looking for, you need to take good care of them. As mentioned above, one of the things you should do is to clean the units regularly.

You can do the cleaning by yourself or hire a professional to help you out. Another thing you should do is to repair the units. Due to old age, it’s common for the units to develop problems. For example, it’s common for the mortar joints to come apart.

When this happens, you should hire a chimney repair professional to fix it. In some cases, you may need to replace the entire lining. This is when the damage is extensive. Here you need to remove the entire tiles and replace them with new ones.

When the chimney liner damage is more than 48 inches, you will have to undertake chimney relining Upper Marlboro. Experts recommend that you undertake the relining with stainless steel liners.