24/7 chimney response — storm damage, smoke in the house, CO alarms (857) 403-9528
South Shore Chimney Repair Masonry · Liners · Leaks · 24/7 (857) 403-9528

24 hours a day, 7 days a week

Emergency chimney repair on the South Shore

The phone is answered around the clock by a person. Below is what counts as a genuine chimney emergency, what to do in the first five minutes, and — honestly — when you should be calling the fire department instead of us.

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Read this first

If you have an active chimney fire, or a carbon monoxide alarm is sounding, stop reading and get everyone out of the house, then call 911 from outside. Those two situations are emergency-services calls, not contractor calls. We come afterwards, to find out what caused it and to make it safe to use again.

Seven situations

What to do right now

Ranked by how urgently they need a response. The advice here is the same advice we would give you on the phone.

Active chimney fire

Call 911 first

What you are seeing: A loud roaring or crackling from the chimney, flames or heavy sparks at the top, dense smoke, or intense heat coming off the chimney breast or the wall beside it.

Get everyone out of the house. Call 911. If — and only if — it takes seconds and you are not putting yourself at risk, close the fireplace doors and the damper on your way past to starve the fire of air. Do not try to fight it. Do not put water on the masonry; the thermal shock can crack it badly. Wait outside.

Afterwards, do not use that fireplace or any appliance connected to that chimney until it has had a Level 2 inspection. A chimney fire routinely cracks flue tiles even when everything looks fine from the room, and a cracked liner can let combustion gases into the structure of the house next time you light it.

Worth calling us out of hours? Yes — after the fire department clears the scene. Same day or first thing next morning for the post-fire assessment and the insurance documentation.

Carbon monoxide alarm sounding

Call 911 first

What you are seeing: Your CO alarm is going off, or people in the house have unexplained headaches, nausea, dizziness or drowsiness that improves when they leave the building.

Leave the house now. Call 911 from outside. Do not stop to open windows, do not hunt for the source, and do not go back in until emergency responders say it is safe. Carbon monoxide has no smell and impairs judgement, which is precisely why people talk themselves into staying inside a little longer.

Once the scene is cleared, the venting system needs to be inspected to find out where the CO came from. A blocked flue, a cracked liner, or a chimney that is back-drafting because it was never resized after an appliance change are all realistic causes.

Worth calling us out of hours? Yes — once responders have cleared the building. The chimney and appliance venting need inspecting before the system is used again.

Smoke coming back into the room

Urgent

What you are seeing: Smoke pushing out of the fireplace into the living space instead of going up the flue.

Open windows to ventilate. If a fire is lit, check the damper is actually open — it is the most common cause and the most embarrassing to discover later. If it is open and smoke is still coming back, put the fire out and let the room clear. If a CO alarm sounds at any point, or anyone feels unwell, stop treating this as a draft problem and treat it as the CO emergency above.

Persistent back-smoking with the damper open usually means a blockage, a flue that is the wrong size for the appliance, or a stack that is too cold to establish draft. All three need a look inside the flue.

Worth calling us out of hours? Call any time. If the house is unusable because of smoke, we treat it as urgent; otherwise a next-morning inspection is the sensible response.

Storm or lightning damage

Urgent

What you are seeing: Masonry down on the roof or in the yard after a storm, a visible hole where the chimney passes through the roof, or a lightning strike on or near the chimney.

Stop using the fireplace and any appliance vented by that chimney. Stay away from the area below the stack, outside and in.

Lightning deserves particular caution. A direct strike can fracture a liner through its entire height and crack the surrounding masonry while leaving almost nothing visible from the ground. After any strike on or near the chimney, treat it as unusable until it has been inspected properly.

Worth calling us out of hours? Yes, if masonry has fallen, the chimney is visibly leaning, or the roof is open to the weather. We will arrange emergency tarping. Be aware that nobody can safely work on a roof in nor'easter winds — the honest answer is that we make it safe and get up there the moment conditions allow.

Leaning or separating chimney

Urgent

What you are seeing: A visible gap opening between the chimney and the house, a stack that looks out of plumb, or a lean that seems to be getting worse.

Treat this as structural. Stop using the fireplace, keep people away from the ground below it, and avoid the rooms directly beneath it if the lean is pronounced. A chimney that has separated from the structure can come down outward, and they are extremely heavy.

Worth calling us out of hours? Yes, if the lean is visible from the ground or appears to be worsening. Emergency stabilisation sometimes needs shoring or staging, which we would rather organise at 7am than after it falls.

Animals in the flue

Urgent, not 911

What you are seeing: Scratching, scrabbling or chirping sounds from inside the chimney, or an animal loose in the firebox.

Keep the damper closed. If something is in the firebox, resist the urge to fling the doors open to let it out — a panicked animal will go into your living room, not out the window. Massachusetts requires licensed wildlife control operators for some species, so removal is not always a job for a chimney company.

One important exception: chimney swifts are protected under the federal Migratory Bird Treaty Act. If swifts are nesting in your flue, roughly May through August, it is illegal to remove or disturb an active nest. The correct sequence is to wait until they migrate in the fall, then have the flue cleaned and capped so it does not happen again.

Worth calling us out of hours? A raccoon with young in the firebox is genuinely urgent. A squirrel or bird is usually manageable by morning. Swifts are not an emergency at all — book the work for the fall.

Water pouring in during a storm

Urgent, not 911

What you are seeing: Water running into the firebox or down the chimney breast during a nor'easter or heavy driven rain.

Put buckets and towels down to protect the floor. Close the damper if it is open. Do not light a fire to 'dry it out'.

We will be straight with you about what happens next: the repair itself cannot be done in a storm, because nobody can safely be on a roof in high wind. What a call at that hour genuinely achieves is getting you booked for first light and arranging emergency tarping if water is actively damaging the building.

Worth calling us out of hours? Worth calling if water is damaging ceilings, walls or floors. Otherwise first thing in the morning is the realistic response.

What 24/7 honestly means in this trade

Plenty of contractors advertise round-the-clock availability and a fair number of them mean an answering service that takes a message. We think it is worth being specific instead, because a chimney emergency at 2am is frightening and vague promises do not help.

Three things are genuinely available at any hour. You will reach a person, not a recording. You will get accurate advice about what to do in the next five minutes, which in several of the cases above is the part that actually protects you. And you will get the earliest safe appointment booked there and then, rather than joining a queue when the office opens.

One thing is not available at any hour, and we would rather say so plainly: nobody can safely carry out chimney repairs on a pitched roof in the dark, in heavy rain, or in the winds of an active nor'easter. Falls are the leading cause of death in construction work, and a contractor who agrees to climb up there at 3am in a storm is either lying to you or is about to make your emergency considerably worse. What we can do in those conditions is arrange emergency tarping to stop water entering the building, and be there at first light.

Why storms drive so much of this work here

The South Shore takes nor'easters directly, and the coastal towns take them hardest. Scituate in particular is among the most storm-battered communities in Massachusetts, and Hull, sitting on a narrow peninsula in Boston Harbor with water on three sides, is exposed to weather from almost every direction.

The damage tends to arrive in a predictable order. Wind lifts or tears the flashing where the chimney meets the roof, which is the single most common source of chimney leaks even in calm weather. Driven rain is forced horizontally into mortar joints that would shed vertical rain without difficulty. Already-loose crown material and spalled brick come off entirely. And on chimneys that were already marginal, the combination of saturation and wind loading is what finally opens the gap between stack and structure.

Which is why the call volume after a big storm is not really about the storm. It is about chimneys that were already deteriorating quietly and needed one hard night to finish the job.

FAQ

Emergency questions

Is there really someone answering at 3am?

Yes, a person. We would rather be honest about what that buys you, though. For a fire or a carbon monoxide alarm, the call that matters is 911, not us — we come afterwards to find out what caused it. For storm damage, we can arrange tarping and book you for first light, but no responsible contractor is climbing onto a wet pitched roof in 50-mile-an-hour winds. What 24/7 means here is that you get a real answer immediately and the earliest safe appointment, rather than a voicemail box until Monday.

Do you charge more for emergency call-outs?

Out-of-hours and emergency work does carry a higher rate than scheduled work, and any contractor who tells you otherwise is building it into the price elsewhere. We will tell you the call-out charge on the phone, before we come out.

My CO alarm went off but stopped. Do I still need someone?

Yes. An alarm that sounds and then stops has still detected carbon monoxide, and the fact that levels fell does not tell you the source is gone — it may simply mean the appliance cycled off or a window got opened. Have the venting system inspected. Do not treat a silent alarm as an all-clear.

Can I use my fireplace after a small chimney fire?

No, not until it has been inspected. Chimney fires burn extremely hot and routinely crack flue tiles, and a cracked liner can let combustion gases reach the interior of the chimney structure and from there the house. The damage is inside the flue where you cannot see it, which is exactly why a Level 2 inspection with a camera is the standard after any chimney fire — including the small ones people describe as 'nothing really'.

What if I am not sure whether it is an emergency?

Call and describe it. Working out whether something needs attention now or on Tuesday is a two-minute conversation, and we would much rather have it than have you sitting up all night worrying about a smell, or ignoring something that matters. There is no charge for the phone call.

Free estimate

Not an emergency, but it is worrying you?

Tell us what you are seeing and we will tell you what it is likely to be, what it will take to fix, and roughly what it should cost — before anyone climbs on your roof.

Prefer to talk it through? The phone is answered around the clock, by a person, including during storms.

Call (857) 403-9528

We work across Quincy, Braintree, Weymouth, Hingham, Milton, Hull, Cohasset, Scituate, Norwell, Marshfield and the rest of the South Shore.

Straight to a real person. No obligation, no pressure — or call (857) 403-9528 any hour.

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