Your Local Philadelphia Chimney Team

The row house city

For much of Philadelphia's history, the typical home has been the row house. The form came to the United States through Philadelphia in the early 19th century, and for a time row houses built elsewhere were called Philadelphia rows. They vary by neighborhood: Federal-style continuous blocks in Old City and Society Hill, Victorian homes in North Philadelphia and twin row houses in West Philadelphia. Society Hill, settled in the early 1680s, keeps one of the largest groups of original 18th and early 19th century buildings in the country, mostly two- to four-story brick rowhouses.

Northwest Philadelphia looks different. Mount Airy has streets of large three-story gray-stone houses, often with slate roofs, and Chestnut Hill has a wide mix of 19th and early 20th century houses by leading Philadelphia architects. Manayunk climbs steep hills in small two- and three-story row homes, and Lower Roxborough is mostly row homes from the 19th and early 20th centuries. In the Northeast, Mayfair was planned with larger rowhouses and rear garages after World War II, Bustleton has twins and single homes but no row homes, and Somerton's subdivisions went up between 1950 and the early 1970s. Germantown runs about two miles along Germantown Avenue and holds many colonial-era buildings, and Fox Chase still has houses that wealthy Philadelphians built and reached by railroad, among them the 1859 Ryerss Mansion.

What rowhouse chimneys need

In attached houses, chimney stacks often rise from a party wall and may sit right beside a neighbor's flue. A crack, a failed crown or a leaking flue can affect the house next door, and smoke or fumes can find their way through gaps in old masonry. Many older city flues were built of brick without a modern liner, and many fireplaces were closed off decades ago while the flue kept venting a boiler or water heater.

Gas exhaust carries a lot of water vapor. When it cools inside an old, unlined or oversized brick flue, it can condense and eat away at the mortar from inside, which shows up as crumbling debris at the base of the chimney or as damp stains on walls. On stone houses in Mount Airy and Chestnut Hill, watch the joints where the chimney passes through slate roofs, since flashing there is hard to reach and often overlooked.

• Debris or sand at the base of the flue or around the boiler connection
• Damp patches or peeling paint on walls next to the chimney
• Loose bricks or missing mortar near the top of the stack
• A cap that is rusted through or missing

Winters that keep thawing

Philadelphia's January daily average is 33.7 degrees, and the temperature often climbs to 50 during thaws. That back and forth is hard on old brick: water soaks in, freezes, expands and pushes the faces and joints apart. The average window for freezing weather runs from about November 6 to April 2. Snow averages 22.4 inches a season but swings widely from year to year, and rain arrives on eight to eleven days a month, about 44 inches a year. The heaviest single storm dropped 30.7 inches of snow in January 1996, and the wettest day on record brought 8.02 inches of rain in July 2013.

Historic blocks and city approvals

The Philadelphia Historical Commission, created in 1955, keeps the Philadelphia Register of Historic Places, which includes individual buildings and whole districts. Fishtown's Jacob Souder Frame Dwelling is on it, and neighborhoods such as Society Hill and Chestnut Hill hold historic districts. If your house is on the register or in a historic district, ask the Historical Commission whether chimney work that changes the outside of the house needs its approval. For other homes, check with the city's building permit office. Pro 1 Chimney is family-owned, with our own licensed and insured crew, and we can describe the work clearly so you know what to ask.