Chimney Caps & Spark Arrestors in Cortez, CO

The Failure Mode Out Here Is Weathering, Not Fire

Montezuma County is drier, sunnier and windier than the valleys east of it, and that decides what goes wrong with cap hardware. High-altitude UV is hard on anything organic: the sealant around a storm collar, the mastic under a flashing, the rubber boot on a pipe penetration. Those perish first, and they perish quietly.

Wind does the rest. A friction-fit cap that has been sitting on a class-A pipe for a decade with its set screws slowly backing out will eventually go, and on open ground with nothing to break the wind it goes sooner. We find caps in the yard reasonably often, and the homeowner's first sign was water in the stove.

Galvanised caps are the other recurring find. They rust out from the inside where flue gas condensation sits on them, and by the time streaking shows on the outside of the pipe the cap has been failing for a while. Stainless costs more once and then stops being a subject.

Spark Arrestors Where There Is Grass, Not Trees

The wildfire conversation out here is different from the one in the pines. Montezuma County burns as range and brush - cheatgrass, sage, piñon-juniper - which carries fire fast and low rather than through crowns. An ember from a flue landing in cured grass in June is a straightforwardly bad outcome, and the distance it can travel across open ground is not small.

Arrestor mesh across the cap is the cheap end of dealing with that. It also happens to be one of the few mitigation items that is entirely within your control and takes an afternoon, unlike re-roofing or clearing thirty feet of defensible space.

Done on Route Days

Cap work in Montezuma County goes on the same scheduled route days as sweeping, which is what keeps the price identical to Durango. If a cap needs fabricating to measurements, that means a measuring visit and a fitting visit on two different route days - we will tell you the likely dates at the quote rather than after.

Also in Cortez

Chimney Caps & Spark Arrestors elsewhere