Q. My question is about chimney bricks. In 1987, I bought a twenty year old brick house. The furnace, gas water heater, and fireplace are all in the basement so the double flue chimney rises from ...

Spring time is a good time to check any brick structures on your property. With all the rain and snow this winter, you want to check to see if there's any ground erosion that may cause the chimney or ...

Three years ago I had to replace half my chimney at a cost of thousands of dollars because of crumbling mortar and cracked bricks. The mason who finished the job told me I needed to have the chimney ...

A while back, we responded to a real estate agent who wanted to know how to fix an old two-story home with severely sloping floors. The home had just been newly drywalled and painted to get it ready ...

Q:We searched for ways to brace our chimney and were referred to a chimney builder by an earthquake retrofitting company. I don't recall the specifics but the job involved steel rods inside all four ...

Who doesn't love a warm, cozy fire? But the maintenance and clean-up that goes with hit? Not so much. And while chimney cleaning needs to be contracted out to certified professional (more on that ...

Q. Our home was built in 1937 with a coal furnace located in the basement. When we purchased the home in 1960, the furnace had been converted over to gas. In about1982 we replaced the furnace with a ...

Reporting from NAPA, Calif. — Earthquakes have shifted the ground beneath Libby Rose’s historic Craftsman house several times in the last half-century, but still her home is standing. The chimneys, ...

Q: A while back you had a column about what to do if inside or around your fireplace shows a lot of whiteness. My brickwork shows white; there is crud inside both upstairs and downstairs fireplaces.