Chimney Liner

Relining begins with a failure that has already happened. A clay-tile liner that has cracked, spalled, lost mortar joints, or breached after a chimney fire is no longer a safety barrier, and a camera scan is what turns 'the brick looks fine' into a documented reline decision. Prime Chimney Experts treats relining as the diagnosed replacement of a liner that exists but has failed — not the cosmetic refresh of a sound one. How this differs from flue installation: there we fit a liner where none ever existed (new construction, an added appliance, an unlined masonry stack); here the channel is already in place and the job is to tear out or abandon the failed liner and replace it full-length.

Because we are replacing a known-bad liner, the first work is grading exactly what failed and choosing the replacement to match. We video-scope the flue to confirm the failure mode — circumferential tile cracks, spalled faces shedding into the firebox, debonded joints, heat-checking from a past flue fire — then size the new liner to the actual clear inside dimension, the appliance outlet, and the chimney height against the NFPA 211 venting tables and the appliance listing. We select the alloy to the fuel: 316Ti stainless for wood, coal, oil, or high-sulfur fuels, the appropriate spec for gas, because the wrong alloy fails as early as the one we are replacing. A reline that swaps a cracked liner for an undersized or wrong-alloy one has solved nothing.

The reline decision also forks on method, and we carry each. A drop-in rigid or flexible stainless liner is the common replacement for a failed tile flue. Where the masonry around the failed liner is itself too compromised to host a drop-in liner, a cast-in-place poured-masonry liner forms a new seamless flue around an inflated former and re-stiffens the chimney in one pour. For a flue that vents a gas appliance and is now oversized after the old liner failed, we downsize the replacement so the gas vents without condensing. For two appliances sharing one stack, the replacement is a common-vent liner sized to the NFPA 54 tables. How this differs from the flexible-liner page: that page is about one replacement material — the corrugated flexible liner for offset flues; this page is the reline decision itself, which may land on flexible, rigid, or cast-in-place depending on what the failed flue and the appliance demand.

When the replacement is in we prove it: a smoke or pressure test confirms the new liner and joints are gas-tight, a draft reading validates the sizing, and we document the UL-1777 listing and NFPA 211 sign-off for your permit, insurer, or post-fire claim — relines after a chimney fire are routinely the insurer's documentation event. That paper trail is the difference between a liner that was swapped and one provably better than what failed. The same scope-grade, alloy-selection, and testing discipline governs every reline across our national network, so a replacement liner installed in any market carries the same engineering and the same proof.