Flue Liners: Your Saint Louis Chimney’s Best Friend:

Chimney flue liners don’t receive much thought from Missouri homeowners, but they should. A properly installed chimney liner is absolutely vital in protecting your home’s chimney from degradation and your home from deadly chimney fires. Moreover, a properly installed chimney flue liner protects the surrounding walls, attic and roofing from sparks, fumes, excessive heat and combustibles, as well as helping the chimney properly vent. Before chimney liners were required by U.S. law in the mid 1950’s, many chimneys lacked flue liners. Unfortunately, this oversight led to thousands of preventable and tragic chimney and house fires.

The Modern Chimney Flue Liner: Metal: Flexible and Rigid:

Metal flue liners have become the most common flue liners due to their simplicity of installation and price. Metal chimney flue liners are much easier to install than either cast-in-place or clay tile liners. Flexible metal liners are typically used, especially if the chimney is not straight with bends or offsets. Another advantage of the flexible flue liners is that it resists cresosote build up and can contract and expand with high temeperatures. Rigid flue liners can be used when when a chimney is built straight with no deviations. Metal flue liners, flexible or rigid, are typically the best choice for chimney that require a liner replacement or exisiting chimneys that lack any kind of liner.

Metal chimney flue liners have a few drawbacks and limitations:

• More susceptible to corrosion.
• Condensation. This however, can be reduced or eliminated through the use of insulation.