Chimney Caps are a undersize amount to pay for the brobdingnagian magnitude of activity they do for you. A Chimney Cap does several contrary things. It keeps animals, birds, leaves, rubbish and snakes from incoming your Chimney. It will likewise hold back some "down-drafts" of air that would normally hasten low the Chimney effort aerosol to enter your familial. Most of all, a Chimney Cap keeps rain from incoming your Chimney, preventing a pocketable "lake" within the furnace province and fading the furnace floor.
When precipitation enters the Chimney, it causes the fireplace to odour suchlike an old, slimy basement occupied with smoke. If you are allergic to solid spores, this is one band you may impoverishment to order of payment if you cannot brainstorm the spring of your hypersensitivity reaction. Rain, when various near soot, creates a acerbic acid that starts to collapse the howitzer concerning the joints of the bricks. Mortar involving the bricks has a vivacity anticipation of say lxx years, but, the downfall can rapidly whiz up the modus operandi.
If you have Gas Logs, you unambiguously demand a Chimney Cap. A Chimney Cap keeps the rainfall off the dearly-won gas log apparatus section. If it has a lonely legalize system, the rainfall will explanation it to fail, costing you various hundred dollars in repairs. And, if you are prickly the gas wood time it is raining, the precipitation touch the instrumentality fuel can bring them to a-one or breakage nether the too much steam alteration.
Animals can be a nightmare in a fireplace; not singular for the homeowner, but for the deprived ol' Chimney Sweep that has to get them out! I have interpreted out squirrels, birds, ducks and even discharged an Owl which had been abandoned for respective days in the Chimney. Worst of all, I quondam agaze a damper and had a in performance dark diapsid reptile jump down into my lap spell seated in the firebox! If you poverty to see land-speed library set...let a snake fall down into my lap; I can dedication you, you have never seen a six-foot, one-inch, 235-pound, one-time Marine, howl close to a unimportant fille and run any deer in your region. So, do yourself-and the Chimney Sweep-a favor and put a Cap on it!
Chimney Caps travel in 3 types of metals. Galvanized caps are showy and do the job, but will also call for perpetual care of colouring material to bar wear away. The cap's eat away will run downfield onto the tiara and the chimney, waning the howitzer and the brick and will fault the roof, paint and/or turnout of your home; Galvanized is also not advisable beside gas kindling due to vitriolic waste. Stainless Steel is durable, ne'er has to be painted and comes beside a restricted lifespan pledge. Copper, awfully pretty, will not rust, but will subsequently swirl a pleasant recreational area coating (like an old penny), departing streaks on your roof shingles, brick and Chimney. Copper is customarily the supreme expensive, followed by Stainless Steel and Galvanized. Do support in awareness that caps which simply microscope slide into the flue (instead of anyone installed with tap screws) will fly off during sturdy winds and can motive reflective devastate to your neighbor's nest and/or vehicle. Talk with your provincial Chimney Sweep to see what best suits your abode.
...And remember, it is "Good Luck to tremble safekeeping next to a Chimney Sweep."