Expert: James Ball - 1/9/2012

Question
James,

Our house was built in 1977.  We have a brick chimney with a fascia of true mountain stone on all sides.  The chimney is not covered by sheetrock or anything on the front (inside)and the only part of the house that touches it is on the side of the chimney and of course, where it goes through the roof.  We have lived in the house for 5 years and built maybe a total of 40 fires in it.  (Open fireplace.)  It has always drawed well.  Recently I had a sweep suggest that the smoke chamber needs to be re-done.  By this I assume he means "parging".  My question is that if you have the brick chimney, with mountain stone (THICK) mountain stone on top of that, do you really need to parge the smoke chamber?  I can understand it if there are zero-tolerance combustibles near, but in our case this isn't true.  I was also told the smoke shelf needed "sealed" with mortar by one sweep, but the two others I had out for estimates said this wasn't needed.  Where the smoke shelf sits, there is nothing around it except for the mountain stone and air, as it sits outside of the structure.  Thoughts?  Sweeps also stated that the draw was very good, and creosote buildup was minimal.

Answer
Hello Justin, based on what you describe, I agree the Smoke Chamber should be "re-done" I use a system called Smoke Tite http://www.smoktite.com/   is a spray Cement coating that fills in any holes and gaps and makes the smoke chamber flow better.
Even with "Thick Mountain Stone" you can still have beams in the wall about and around the fireplace and chimney, I would have a local Certified Chimney Sweep www.csia.org, (there you can look up by zip code to find one near you) take a first hand look at what you have, they should be able to help.
Hope this helps
James