What's your chimney doing?

Three tiers, and the cards above are colour-coded to them. Anything that puts smoke or fumes into the room means stop using the fireplace tonight — that is a draft or blockage fault and it can carry carbon monoxide. Water damage, cracked masonry and failing mortar are address-soon: safe to keep using, and more expensive every month you leave them, because every freeze drives the damage deeper. Smells, cold drafts and minor soot are routine — worth fixing, not worth worrying about tonight.

Often enough to know which service to book, which saves a wasted visit. The useful observations are all things you can make from the ground: whether it only happens in certain weather, whether water appears in the firebox or on a ceiling, whether the smell is worse on warm damp days, and whether anything has changed since last winter. Each symptom page walks through the checks and says what each answer points at. What you cannot do from a chair is see inside the flue, and that is where the expensive faults live.

By elimination, in a fixed order, cheapest and most likely first. A leak gets a hose test one section at a time from the bottom up, so the first appearance of water identifies the entry point. A draft fault gets the flue scanned before anyone touches the fireplace. The alternative — fixing everything that looks suspect — costs more and frequently misses, because the obvious defect is often not the one causing the symptom.

Yes, and intermittent is a clue rather than a reason to wait. A leak that only shows in driving rain, a smell that only appears in July, a fireplace that only smokes when the extractor is running — each of those patterns rules out several causes immediately. Tell whoever you call what the pattern is; it is more useful than a description of the symptom on its own.

A Level 1 inspection is usually included with an annual sweep at no extra charge, and it answers most routine questions. A Level 2 with a camera scan costs more because it takes longer and produces a written report with footage — that is the one for anything involving smoke in the room, a suspected chimney fire, or a property sale. Either way you should get the findings in writing whether or not anything needs doing.