Chimney Services in Lake Arrowhead, CA

Chimney Service in Lake Arrowhead

Lake Arrowhead presents a different set of chimney problems to the rest of the mountain, mostly because of the size of the houses. Alongside the original 1920s Arrowhead Woods cabins there is a large stock of substantial lakefront and ridge homes, and those routinely carry three or four flues on a single structure — an open great-room fireplace, a master bedroom fireplace, a wood stove in a lower level, and a furnace or water heater flue sharing the same chase. Owners typically know about the one they light. The furnace flue and the guest-room fireplace nobody has used since 2009 are the ones that turn up blocked, unlined or full of nesting material. The other local factor is occupancy: many of these homes are second residences or vacation rentals, so problems go unnoticed for months at a time and small faults — a displaced cap, a hairline crown crack, a jackdaw's nest — get a full season to become expensive before anyone is there to see them.

Multi-flue chimneys are the norm rather than the exception here, which makes a multi-flue cap and a properly cast crown a much better investment than they are on a single-stack cabin — one cap protects the whole crown surface. Arrowhead Woods carries architectural review through the property owners' association, so anything that changes the visible exterior, including a new cap profile or a rebuilt stack, is worth checking against those rules before we start. Second-home and rental occupancy also shifts the maintenance schedule: we recommend scheduling inspection at the start of the season rather than when the owner happens to be up, because an unoccupied house does not report its own problems.