Sweeping, relining and draft correction across Rapid City, Box Elder and Sturgis. Firm price before anything starts, and a straight answer when the answer is that you do not need us this year.
Creosote and nesting out, a Level 1 inspection on every visit, and photographs of anything worth knowing about - handed over whether or not you buy anything.
Read more ServiceCracked clay tile and stainless liners sized to the appliance rather than to the chimney it happens to sit in. Camera run before anyone quotes a number.
Read more ServiceFireplaces that spill into the room. We measure draft with the house as you actually use it, because four different things cause this and only one is the chimney.
Read more MorePrices, what is included, and the jobs we will tell you not to buy. Written down rather than explained at your kitchen table.
Read moreMost chimney advice is written for places with one long winter. These hills do something else: they swing, hard and fast, and that is the mechanism behind most of the damage we find.
On 22 January 1943 a chinook took Spearfish, forty miles north of here, from minus 4 degrees at 7:30 in the morning to plus 45 at 7:32 - forty-nine degrees in two minutes. It reached 58 by afternoon, and when the wind died it fell back to minus 4 in twenty-seven minutes. Window glass frosted over and cracked from the shock. No weather station anywhere has recorded a faster change since.
That day was exceptional. The mechanism behind it is not. Chinooks come off these hills every winter, and each severe swing works the mortar joints between clay tile sections a fraction wider, because tile, mortar and brick do not expand at the same rate or the same speed. It is a fatigue failure, which is why it turns up on chimneys that have never had a fire in them and have never been abused.
The second thing this landscape does is geographic. Rapid City sits in a basin, and under settled winter high pressure cold air pools on the valley floor while warmer air sits above it. That inversion removes the density difference a chimney runs on, so a fireplace that has behaved for years spills smoke for a week and then behaves again. It is not a fault and it cannot be repaired - but it can be given enough margin to work on the bad days.
Neither of those is what people expect to hear, which is why we measure before quoting rather than after.
| Town | What it is | |
|---|---|---|
| Rapid City57701 / 57702 | Hills, a basin and a housing stock shaped by the rebuild after 1972. Access drives the price here more than roof size does. | Open |
| Box Elder57719 | The fastest-growing town in the state. Almost no masonry - factory-built systems, where the first-year problems are not soot. | Open |
| Sturgis57785 | Northern foothills, older stock, wood as real heat - and housing that earns its living for two weeks in August. | Open |
A photo of the stack or the appliance tells us more than anything you can type. We answer questions free, before you book.
Rather talk it through
September and October fill first. Relining is the one job here that is not weather-blocked, so it is worth knowing what you have before the season starts.