Having a chimney and a fireplace can add an extra sense of home to your living space. There’s nothing like a crackling fire on a cold night. If you don’t ensure proper Atlanta chimney cleaning and maintenance, then all that goodness goes to waste. One area of important maintenance is installing a chimney cap. Here’s why you need one for your chimney.
Moisture Reduction
The most obvious reason why you need a chimney cap is that, without it, there’s nothing protecting the top of your chimney from the rain outside. Also, it helps in a more general sense to prevent moisture from condensing within the chimney, which guards against the growth of mold and mildew.
No Animals
Squirrels and other rodent pests may end up finding your chimney far more cozy and interesting than you’d like. The last thing that you want is for a small animal to end up dead and stuck inside your chimney, for a number of reasons—the smell certainly being an important one. A chimney cap prevents these animals from crawling into your chimney space and causing mayhem.
Prevent Downdrafts from Entering Your Home
What is a downdraft? It’s when the different pressures of the wind in the air cause some of it to gust directly downward. Downdrafts that push their way down into a chimney that doesn’t have a chimney cap can end up blowing ash and smoke back into your home, causing a hazard to health and cleanliness. A chimney cap can be a simple way to prevent this.
Spark and Ember Prevention
It’s not an inevitable fate, but sparks and embers from a fireplace can travel up a chimney and landing on top of the roof, still hot and flammable. When this happens on a dry enough roof, it can create a potential fire hazard. This is why a chimney cap is sometimes referred to as a spark arrestor. It helps prevent your ceiling from catching on fire. That’s certainly an important side effect of having one in place, and for getting regular Atlanta chimney cleaning as needed.