“That’s too much — no one else even mentioned we’d need an expensive liner — you trying to rip us off here?” Chimneys — you can’t live with them and you can’t live without them — or at least you ...

That new high-efficiency furnace you’re installing might come at a high price: a buildup of carbon monoxide around the water heater or condensation in the chimney. The source of the problem is what ...

Question: When I was selling my home, the home inspector recommended the chimney, which we have used for years, get a new liner just for the water heater. This will cost several hundred dollars that I ...

Q: Not long ago you answered a question from a reader about fireplace chimneys. You talked at length about dampers but you did not mention the need for a chimney liner. My house is 1906 vintage, and a ...

Q: Our 1940 home has a brick fireplace and chimney. We had it inspected recently and were told by several people that it has a crack near the roofline and needs to be taken down and rebuilt. The ...

Q. Our house was built in 1965 and has an interior chimney with three flues, each with clay liners. One flue is unused and was probably installed for a connection to a furnace that was not needed; the ...

This rigid chimney liner system is designed to increase the efficiency of an existing chimney and avoid the expense of making minor repairs. For existing chimneys that do not have the correct flue ...

Jeff Somers is a freelancer who has been writing about writing, books, personal finance, and home maintenance since 2012. When not writing, Jeff spends his free time fixing up his old house. He has ...

When an unsolicited caller offered to clean her chimney for $35, a New York woman thought she had little to lose. That was before the chimney sweep arrived, climbed up on the roof and came back down ...