Chimney Cap Installation in Somerville, NJ

Replacing a cap means removing the old one, measuring the flue or the top of the stack, and fastening a new cap sized to what it covers. The crew checks the tile and the crown underneath at the same time, since a cap sitting on a broken tile or a split crown will not stay put for long. The new one has to keep clear of the flue opening and leave the exhaust plenty of room. New Jersey's residential code sets that room at four times the open area of the flue outlet or more.

Most caps go on in a single visit, in any season, because a cap involves no mortar that has to cure. That makes it a reasonable job for a cold month when crown work cannot be done. Roof access decides the rest. On a steep Victorian roof or one with slate, tell the office when you book, so the visit can be planned around it. If the roof cannot be walked safely, you hear what was and was not reached.

Usually it can, once any local review is settled, since a cap shows from the street and may count as an exterior change. Rocky Hill, Millstone, East Millstone in Franklin, and the villages of Neshanic Station and North Branch in Branchburg all hold listed historic districts, and some carry local rules. Check with the borough or township before the work. We can suggest a cap that suits the house and keeps its look, and you confirm it with the commission before anything is installed.

The practical point is scale. A low, plain cap in a dark finish, or a pair of small caps clamped to individual tiles, usually reads as part of the chimney from the street, where a tall shiny box does not. Copper is a traditional choice on old masonry, weathers to a soft brown and suits many historic houses. On an old stack, the fastening matters too: a cap clamped to the tile avoids drilling into soft brick, where the masonry allows that approach.

Cap every flue that is open to the sky, in use or not. A Somerville house often has a fireplace nobody lights beside a flue for a boiler or a water heater, and both take in the same rain. The idle flue stays damp, because no warm exhaust ever dries it, and that wet masonry is shared with the working flue next to it. One lid over the stack, or a cap on each tile, keeps both dry.

A chimney can also lose its job altogether. In Rocky Hill and Montgomery, a house converting from oil to gas or a heat pump may be left with a stack that vents nothing. In Manville, a house raised above the flood line may have moved its furnace out of the basement and left the old flue behind. A chimney with no appliance left on it should still be capped, since a stack with an open top goes on taking water for as long as it stands. If an appliance still vents up one flue, the screen and the open area have to suit that appliance, so tell us what is connected.

An oil flue sends soot and scale up to the cap, so its screen has to be coarse enough to stay open and easy to clean. About one Rocky Hill home in nine still heats with fuel oil, by Census estimates, the largest share of any town served from Somerville, and oil burners turn up on the older farmsteads in Montgomery and on the Sourland side of Hillsborough. A fine mesh on that flue clogs with soot until the burner loses draft, which is a problem you only learn about on a cold night.

So the screen gets brushed with the flue on each yearly cleaning, and a cap missing its screen goes on the list as well, since a sound screen is what keeps animals out. Check with your heating contractor if the burner starts running rough after a cap goes on, because a blocked top can change how it drafts. Gas appliance flues want the same open area without the soot, and they deserve the same attention, because a nest at the top of one can block the exhaust of a water heater.

Often the association does, so ask before the work is booked. Townhouse and condo communities in Hillsborough and Franklin may control the roof, the siding and every opening in them, and a chimney cap or a chase cover can need approval. Detached houses from the 1980s and 1990s in Branchburg and Montgomery leave that decision to the owner. The fireplace there is usually factory built, with a metal flue in a framed chase, and the cap has to be the one listed for that chimney.

The evaluation and the estimate are free, and you see photographs of the top of the chimney before work is booked. As a veteran owned company, licensed and insured under NJ HIC 13VH13654300, AMG takes cap calls at its Somerville location 8 AM to 8 PM, 7 days a week. Where the crew finds a cracked crown beneath the old cap, chimney crown repair is listed as a separate line, so the choice stays with you.