What is usually up there

Squirrels fall in more often than they move in. A flue is a smooth vertical shaft and a squirrel that drops in frequently cannot climb back out. The sound is frantic scrabbling rather than settled nesting.

Raccoons deliberately choose chimneys as denning sites, particularly females with young in spring. The sound is heavier, slower, and often includes chirping from kits. A raccoon in a chimney is a serious blockage.

Chimney swifts are birds that genuinely nest in flues by preference. The sound is rapid chittering, loudest when the young are being fed.

Why we do not just cap it

Sealing a living animal into a flue is inhumane, and it creates a worse problem: an animal that dies in the chimney produces an odour that will make a room unusable for weeks and a blockage that still has to be removed.

There is also a legal dimension. Chimney swifts are migratory birds with federal protection in the United States, and an active nest with young cannot simply be removed. The honest answer in that case is that capping waits until they fledge, usually a matter of weeks. We will give you a realistic date rather than a convenient one.

What not to do

Do not light a fire to drive it out. It does not work reliably, it is cruel, and a panicking animal in a flue can end up in your living room.

Do not open the damper to look. A raccoon that comes down into the firebox is now in the house.

Do not pour anything down the chimney.

Why Wayne gets more of these calls

Tree cover. Most of the village sits among mature woodland, and overhanging branches give squirrels and raccoons direct roof access without ever touching the ground. Open subdivisions a few miles west get a fraction of these calls.

The same tree cover keeps masonry shaded and damp, so a Wayne chimney tends to spall faster than the same chimney on an open lot.

The permanent fix

A stainless cap with a proper mesh spark arrestor, fitted once the flue is empty. It is inexpensive relative to the problem, and it ends this permanently. On a wooded lot it is not an optional extra.

What we find once the flue is clear

The other reason to inspect rather than simply cap is that a nest is rarely the only thing up there. Years of accumulated nesting material, droppings and debris sit on the smoke shelf, and a flue that has hosted animals has usually been uncapped for a long time — which means rain has been coming down it for just as long. The damper is often seized, the smoke shelf is often wet, and mortar joints inside the flue are frequently eroded from that combination of water and creosote. Capping an empty flue without clearing and checking what is beneath it leaves all of that in place, sealed in and out of sight.

Serving Wayne and the Fox Valley. See what we do in Wayne, or look at our published starting prices.