Brick Chimney Care: How to Lime-Bleed a Chimney

A home with a chimney.
  • 2-5 hours
  • Intermediate
  • 50-100
What You'll Need
Work clothes
Gloves
Goggles
Chimney rod
Vacuum
Broom
Scraper
Hose
What You'll Need
Work clothes
Gloves
Goggles
Chimney rod
Vacuum
Broom
Scraper
Hose

Many people don't know much about chimney care. When it comes to lime mortar, it was often used in chimneys when assembling and making them look nice. More often than not, the lime is bleeding down the chimney and causing problems. Here are a few materials and tools that you may need in order to stop this problem in your chimney as well as the steps to help guide you through the process.

Step 1 - Clean

Cleaning out the chimney is the best place for you to begin with this project. You might want to change into work clothes as well as put on gloves and goggles for protection. Be sure to lay out a tarp at the bottom of the fireplace. This will ensure that any of the dust and soot that comes down from the chimney does not harm your floor or furniture in your home.

Next, go up to the roof using a ladder and use the chimney rod and broom to clean out and wipe down the inside of the chimney. Once you have finished, you can go back inside and clean out the bottom where everything fell. This can be done with a broom and a vacuum.

When cleaning the inside out, you will want to start in one area and work in small sections. This way you can keep the mess manageable and it won't get out of hand.

Step 2 - Remove Lime

Once you have cleaned out the chimney, you can use a scraper to get any of the lime mortar out that you can. Typically you will be able to reach some but then will have to add the rod at the end of the scraper to get in to scrape the rest of it.

Once you have scraped the area once, go in and do it one more time. You want to make sure that you are getting all of it done completely and doing it two or three times will help achieve that goal.

Once you have scraped, you can go up to the top and use a hose to wash it down. This will help to remove any of the debris that got caught up after it was scraped off.

Step 3 - Clean Up

Once everything has been removed, you will have to do some serious cleaning. Like in the first step, you will want to start on one end and wipe up the debris from one area and move to the next area slowly as you clean. Having a tarp there is helpful because you can just wipe it all onto the tarp and then just throw that away in one big swoop.

Make sure you clean it every few months.