Chimney Sweep in Franklin, NJ
Chimney sweep service in Franklin, NJ for the older houses of the borough, many of them dating from its years as a zinc-mining town on the Wallkill River.
Photo: Mr. Matté, contact me , Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0
Built fast, in the years zinc was king
Franklin began as Franklin Furnace, an iron-making settlement on the Wallkill River. Zinc changed it. After the New Jersey Zinc Company was formed in 1897, the population went from about five hundred to three thousand in sixteen years. Franklin Borough was incorporated in 1913, at the height of that growth.
A town that grows sixfold in a decade and a half needs a great many houses quickly. Homes of that era were heated with coal, and their chimneys were built for it: narrow flues, often unlined, serving a stove or furnace instead of an open hearth.
A century on, those flues are doing work they were not designed for. Some vent gas or oil furnaces. Others have had a wood stove connected. In both cases the old brick is exposed to moisture and acids it never saw when coal was the fuel.
Century-old coal flues in modern use
An old coal flue is swept carefully and then examined with a light or a camera. The question is always the same: is there a liner, and is it whole?
Where the brick inside is bare or eroded, the honest advice is to line the flue before relying on it. A stainless liner fits inside most of these chimneys without any rebuilding.
The outside matters as well. Tall, slender stacks from that period often have worn mortar near the top, and it is far easier to repoint a few courses than to rebuild a chimney that has started to lean.
Chimney services for Franklin homes
Franklin, New Jersey
Service covers the borough on both sides of Route 23. The map shows the area where sweeps are carried out, not a local branch.