The cap is the small, easily forgotten piece of a chimney that quietly prevents some of its costliest problems. An open flue is a standing invitation for rain and snow to pour straight down onto the damper and the smoke shelf, for sparks to drift out onto the roof, and for the squirrels, raccoons, and nesting birds of every Cambridge yard to move into the one shaft that is supposed to be carrying smoke away. Cambridge Chimney Sweep installs caps across the city in stainless steel and copper, sized to your specific flue, fitted with spark-arrestor mesh, and anchored to hold through a New England nor'easter. It is among the least expensive upgrades a chimney can get and one of the highest returns for the money.
- Stainless steel and copper caps to suit the chimney
- Sized to your exact flue rather than a generic fit
- Spark-arrestor mesh to keep embers off the roof
- Shuts out rain, snow, and animals from the flue
- Anchored to hold through coastal New England wind
- Multi-flue caps for shared city chimney stacks
The slow damage an open flue invites in
A chimney with no cap is a vertical drain aimed straight into the core of the structure, and in a city that takes Cambridge's rain and snowfall that matters more than people imagine. Every storm sends water down the open flue onto the smoke shelf and the damper, where it rusts the steel, pools, and soaks into the masonry from the inside, hurrying along exactly the kind of decay that ends in cracked tile and a leaking chimney. Snow does the same job at a slower pace, packing into the flue and melting in stages so the wetting drags on for days after the storm itself has cleared out. A cap converts that open drain into a covered, vented opening that still lets the smoke out while shutting the weather firmly out.
Animals are the other reason an uncapped flue causes grief. A warm chimney is prime real estate for the squirrels and raccoons that thrive in Cambridge's leafy older neighborhoods, and a flue stuffed with a nest is a flue that will not draw, which shoves smoke and carbon monoxide back into the house the moment you light a fire. Clearing a nest is unpleasant, occasionally dangerous, and entirely avoidable. The mesh on a properly fitted cap keeps the animals out before they ever get a foothold, and it doubles as a spark arrestor, catching the embers a wood fire throws up the flue before they can land on a Cambridge roof or drift onto the house next door.
Fitting a cap that genuinely fits and stays put
A cap only earns its place if it is sized and secured correctly, which is why a generic cap jammed onto a flue is rarely worth the bother. We measure the actual flue, or every flue on a shared stack, and fit a cap matched to it, because one that sits too tight chokes the draft and one that sits too loose blows off in the first hard gust. On Cambridge's tall city chimneys, exposed to the wind that funnels down the streets between close-built houses and the gusts that ride in on a coastal storm, the anchoring matters as much as the fit. We secure caps to hold, and we use stainless steel or copper rather than a thin galvanized cap that will rust through after a few seasons of New England weather.
Plenty of older Cambridge homes carry a single chimney stack serving two or more flues, the fireplace, the furnace, an abandoned gas line, and those call for a multi-flue cap that covers the whole top under one well-built enclosure rather than a cluster of mismatched single caps. A multi-flue cap also lets us deal with the crown beneath it at the same time, since the two work hand in hand to keep the top of the chimney watertight. We talk through the right cap for your particular chimney, in the metal that suits your budget and how long you plan to stay, and we leave you with an opening that vents freely and seals against everything it should.
A small outlay that heads off large ones
Of everything a chimney can need, a cap is among the best values, precisely because it stops the slow, expensive damage nobody notices until it is well advanced. The price of a good cap is a fraction of what it costs to repair the rusted damper, the water-soaked masonry, or the cracked crown that an open flue invites, and a tiny fraction of what it costs to remove an animal nest and undo the fire risk a blocked flue creates. A cap is quiet insurance for the whole top of the chimney, and on a Cambridge home standing through a full New England year it pays for itself many times over.
If your chimney has no cap, or the cap it has is rusted out, crushed, or hanging loose, the fix is usually quick and inexpensive, and it is one of the simplest ways to add life to everything below it. Cap work also pairs naturally with a crown repair or a sweep, and lining the two up together often makes good sense, since the crew is already on the roof and the top of the chimney is open to work on. We will look over the top of your chimney, tell you honestly what it needs, and put a straight price in writing, with no push to add work the chimney does not truly require.
One chimney, every service accounted for
A chimney is a system, so chimney cap installation rarely stands alone, it connects to flue cleaning, chimney camera scan, chimney patching, flue relining, tuckpointing, and our crew handles all of it under one roof. We bring the same service to Chimney Cap Installation in Somerville, Chimney Cap Installation in Arlington, Belmont chimney cap installation, Watertown chimney cap installation and everywhere else across the Cambridge area.
If you searched for a local chimney crew near you, you have reached a local crew, call 617-221-4253 any time. For background, read Creosote Buildup in Cambridge, MA Chimneys: Why It Forms and When It Becomes Dangerous on our blog, or head back to our Cambridge home page to see everything we do.