A coal-era chimney serving a modern furnace?
- A pre-war house whose stack once served coal heat
- A furnace or boiler venting into old, oversized masonry
- Crumbling joint material inside the flue, visible only on camera
Why it happens in Ohio: Ohio heated on coal, and its pre-war flues carry the scars: mortar eaten from the inside by decades of sulphurous exhaust, hidden behind furnaces that were swapped without resizing the flue. Add lake-effect moisture on the north coast (leak calls spike after every major event) and the freeze cycle working on a deep stock of century homes, and the classic Ohio find is a stack whose inner face is far worse than its exterior suggests.
What fixes it, and what it costs
Coal exhaust spent decades attacking these flues from the inside, and the conversion to gas made them oversized and cool-running: condensation finishes what the coal began. The camera tells the truth the exterior hides, and the repair is a correctly sized liner in the affected flue: it fixes the draft, the condensation and the deterioration in one move.
- Stainless liner, insulated, full height
- $2,500–$6,000
- Stainless for a stove or insert
- $1,800–$4,000
