Smoke chamber repair in Tallulah-North Shore by local masons

Smoke chamber repair in Tallulah-North Shore from a family-owned crew, with the refractory product and cure time in writing.

Fully licensed and insured
Locally owned
Family owned and operated
Same-day service

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Get a quote for chimney and fireplace repair and installation in Jacksonville.

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(904) 920-5495 Free Inspection

Smoke chamber pros who measure before they trowel

Locally owned in Jacksonville
Family owned and operated
100% satisfaction guaranteed
Free inspection and estimate
Same-day service available
10% off any service

Where parging will do, we say so and price the smaller job.

Free inspection and estimateWe look above the damper in your Tallulah-North Shore fireplace, measure the chamber and write down what we find at no cost.
Upfront pricing, no hidden feesCleaning, resets, parging and cure time are priced line by line before the first trowel goes in.
Family owned and operatedA family-owned local crew does the reaching and troweling through the throat, and cleans up after itself.

Call (904) 920-5495 Free Inspection

Planning chamber work with other repairs

Chamber work shares its working space with the damper, the firebox and the first flue tile, and each needs the room protected and the fireplace out of use for its cure time. Doing them in the right order, in one visit where possible, avoids undoing finished work. Each of those jobs also needs its own cure time before the next can start.

Tell us what else is planned for your fireplace in Tallulah-North Shore when you call (904) 920-5495, and the estimate will set out the order, the cure times and each price on its own line.

Tallulah-North Shore is one of the named neighborhoods of Jacksonville. Tallulah-North Shore falls within Duval County.

From the smoke shelf to the first flue tile

Stepped chamber brick cleaned to bare masonry
Flaking parge coats removed and redone
Damper frames reset in their bedding
Chamber geometry measured against the code

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The order of a smoke chamber repair

Tell us what the fireplace does
Spilling smoke, a stale smell or grit on the damper plate tells us what to bring to the free visit.
Chamber measured and mapped
Height, width and wall slopes are measured, and each wall, the shelf and the flue transition are checked.
Cleaned, reset, parged
Soot and glaze come off, loose units are reset, joints filled, then refractory mortar goes on in layers.
Cured and draft tested
The product cures as its data sheet directs, then a small fire shows how the fireplace draws.

The code does not change inland in Tallulah-North Shore

Distance from the coast has nothing to do with the rules for the chamber. In Tallulah-North Shore, as anywhere under the Florida code, the walls are 8 inches of masonry, or 6 with a lining, and the parge coat is refractory mortar.

We measure against those rules on every chamber we repair in Tallulah-North Shore.

10% off any service booked within 72 hours of inspection

Book the chamber work at the inspection or up to 72 hours later, and 10% comes off.

Call (904) 920-5495 Free Inspection

How thick the chamber walls must be

R1001.8 builds the smoke chamber from solid masonry, grouted hollow units, stone or concrete, 8 inches in total at the front, back and sides. A lining of 2 inch firebrick or 5/8 inch vitrified clay lets that total fall to 6 inches, lining included.

Those numbers are about keeping heat inside the masonry. When we see a chamber built thinner, or thinned by lost joints, we write it down, because parging restores the surface but not the mass of the wall behind it. Where the chimney breast shows in an attic or a closet, we measure what we can see and write down what we could not reach.

Water reaching the smoke shelf

Rain that gets into the flue runs down the tile and lands on the smoke shelf. A shelf that holds water keeps the damper frame wet and soaks the masonry below the chamber, and wet masonry does not take a parge coat well.

The water source goes on the estimate first, and we look for it at the chimney top first. The shelf is then reshaped to drain toward the firebox, and the chamber is parged once it has dried out. A parge coat laid over wet masonry traps water behind it and can blister.

Distance from the chamber to framing

R1001.11 holds combustible framing 2 inches off a masonry fireplace at its face and sides, 4 inches off its back, and the gap stays empty. The smoke chamber is part of that fireplace, and heat that escapes through thin walls or open joints reaches whatever is closest.

Where the chimney breast can be seen from an attic, a closet or an access panel, we check what surrounds the chamber. Anything closer than the code allows is written down as its own item, with the work needed to fix it. Clearance findings are written up plainly, since they are a fire risk and not a matter of draft.

What we check above the damper in Tallulah-North Shore

Soot and loose mortar cleaned off to bare, sound masonry
Open joints filled before any parge coat goes on
Damper frame bedding checked and reset where loose
Rebuild option priced where the chamber shape is out of limits

Before the chamber is parged

Is parging enough, or does the chamber need rebuilding?

Parging is enough when the chamber's height and wall slopes are inside the code limits and the walls are sound. We measure both before recommending either, and the numbers are on the estimate.

Will the work make a mess in the house?

The opening is sealed while we work, the floor is covered and the debris is vacuumed at the source. We clean the firebox before we leave.