Having a fireplace in your home is a privilege because it lets you stay warm and adds some ambiance to a family gathering. If you have one in your home, it's important to take care of it and maintain it properly—and you can if you take the following fireplace maintenance actions.
Put a Chimney Cap at the Top
The top of your fireplace will have an opening around the chimney, which is designed to allow smoke and heat to dissipate when your fireplace runs. That being said, you don't want this opening just remaining because it can let in elements and pests. They'll make fireplace maintenance more difficult than it needs to be.
For this reason, you should put a cap on the top of your fireplace's chimney. It's still going to let smoke and heat out, but there won't be a large enough opening to allow things to get inside that cause you frustration.
Hire a Professional Company When Stains Develop
When you keep a fire going in the fireplace, soot is naturally going to develop. It can eventually stain the inside of your fireplace if you don't clean it regularly. If you currently have these stains, you should hire a professional fireplace cleaning company.
They'll be able to treat these stains with strong commercial cleaners that alleviate them completely. The solutions also will be specifically geared to work great for your fireplace's materials, so you don't have to worry about any sort of damage happening.
Continue to Test Your Fireplace
Even if you don't use your fireplace often, it's still a good idea to check to make sure it's performing optimally. You want to test its performance every couple of months so that if there are red flags, you'll know about them and can then have them addressed before you start relying on the fireplace again.
Maybe there is something wrong with the heat that the fireplace is providing or a lot of smoke is created. Performance tests will help you spot these issues for sure and then you can take the right measures, whether it's DIY repairs or hiring a professional company.
A lot of residential homes have fireplaces that give families a chance to get warm in a comfortable way. If you have one and don't want to face a lot of issues with it over the years, carefully plan out its maintenance to where it's purposeful and consistent.
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