How do I keep birds and animals from nesting in my fireplace vent or chimney?
Black Mountain and Montreat's heavily wooded lots put more branches over your chimney than almost anywhere we serve, and overhanging limbs are the highway squirrels and raccoons use to reach a flue. Trim them back, then cap the chimney — a mesh-sided stainless cap on masonry, or the intact factory screen on a natural-gas termination — to close the route entirely.
Shaded lots, easy access for animals
The tree canopy that keeps Montreat cool and damp also gives animals a running start: a squirrel doesn't scale your brick, it walks out a limb and drops onto the crown. Keeping branches cut back from the chimney is half the defense here, and it's the half people forget on a shaded mountain lot where the trees crowd right up to the roofline.
The other half is the cap itself. On Black Mountain's masonry flues, a properly fitted stainless cap with screening blocks that drop-in; on a sealed gas fireplace, the termination screen does the same — provided nobody's let it fill with the leaf litter these wooded lots shed all fall.
Damp, cold mornings favor an early check
Swannanoa Valley inversions run Black Mountain mornings 10 to 15 degrees colder than Asheville, and the persistent moisture on these shaded lots works steadily on a cap's mesh and the crown beneath it. We're only fifteen minutes east, so a seasonal look is simple to fit in before it becomes a problem.
Frost lingers later into spring here than in town, which stretches the window when a warm flue looks appealing to wildlife. Book a late-summer or fall inspection to clear anything that moved in over the warm months and confirm the cap is sound — and never burn a nest out, since smoke backs up and swifts are protected. Call (828) 545-0525.
Fireplace help in Black Mountain
We install and service fireplaces throughout Black Mountain and the rest of Buncombe County — just 15 minutes east from our Asheville-area showroom.
Related questions
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