What routine maintenance does a wood-burning fireplace need each year?
In Asheville your wood-burning fireplace needs one professional chimney sweep and flue inspection a year, plus your own ash and firebox upkeep — and where you live in town changes what we look hardest at. An original Montford masonry chimney and a newer South Asheville wood design age very differently. Book it in late summer, before the first cold snap.
Two housing stories, one service
Steady Flame is headquartered right here on Emma Rd, so we see both Ashevilles every week. In Montford, North Asheville, and around Biltmore Village, the original masonry chimneys are the ones that need a careful eye — mortar joints that have loosened over decades, a crown that has hairline-cracked, and clay flue liners that predate current code. The newer clean-face and modern wood builds out in South Asheville have factory chimney systems that instead need their gaskets, caps, and spark arrestors checked. Either way, the annual sweep clears the creosote that turns a cozy fire into a flue fire.
Why our elevation loads the flue
At 2,134 feet, Asheville nights stay in the 20s well into early spring, which stretches your burning season longer than folks realize — and a longer season means more creosote laid down inside the chimney. Burn seasoned hardwood that has dried a full year, keep a thin bed of ash under the grate rather than scraping it bare, and don't lean on a chemical sweeping log as a substitute for the real thing. Those logs loosen a little glaze; they don't clean the smoke chamber or tell you whether the liner is sound.
When the sweep finds real work
Most years the inspection is a clean bill of health and you burn worry-free. When it isn't — a cracked liner, a failing crown, water getting in — we handle the repair as one accountable company, and if the fix crosses into relining or a wood-to-gas conversion, we pull the Buncombe County permit and meet the inspector. Call (828) 545-0525 to get on the late-summer schedule before the rush.
Fireplace help in Asheville
We install and service fireplaces throughout Asheville and the rest of Buncombe County — we're headquartered right here.