It’s hard to care about your chimney and fireplace when summer is still raging on outdoors. Weather aside, fall is still coming and soon you’ll be needing to use that chimney and you might not have it ready!

What do you need to do to prepare your chimney for the cold season?

Keeping your chimney and fireplace clean and protected now will lead to a successful heating experience in the fall and winter.

Here’s what you need to do with your chimney during the dog days of summer:

• Clean the hearth
  We hear it all the time: people forget to sweep and dust their hearth, meaning it can be full of ash. Yuck. You don’t want that lying around, being breathed in. Time to get to cleaning. You’re going to want to wear gloves and old clothes because this job gets dirty! Scoop out the ashes with an ash shovel. Use a small broom and dustpan to sweep out the rest. Next, you’re going to want to use your favorite gentle cleaner and scrubber to get the creosote up and give everything a final wipe off and vacuum.
• Close the damper tight
  If you’re not closing your damper tight there is essentially a hole in your house letting cool air out!
• Turn off pilot light (gas)
  If you’re using a gas fireplace, you should know if you have a standing pilot light and make sure it’s been out for the summer.
• Replace the decorations!
  If that fireplace was just sitting there going unused, you may have used that space to decorate. Move the plants from around the hearth and get ready for your chimney to host stockings and nutcrackers instead.
• Call Southern Chimneys to remove creosote
  Before giving those hands and knees too much of a workout, you honestly probably won’t be able to get all that creosote out that’s been storing up all winter. Even if you do, you certainly won’t be able to get aaaall up in it. That’s when you need to give a professional chimney service like Southern Chimneys a call.
• Call Southern Chimneys to check or install a chimney cap
  It’s always a very wet summer in the southeast. Chimney caps keep out things like moisture and animals that can wind up in your chimney at summertime.

Consider making end-of-summer the time for your yearly chimney inspection!

It’s always smart to get a jump on things and schedule your chimney and fireplace work and inspections long before the weather cools down. Now’s the time to clean up, decorate, and get things inspected so you can enjoy your living room, clean and safe, all year long.

The post Use this resource to prepare your chimney for fall! first appeared on Southern Chimneys.

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