Carol Stream did not exist before 1959. Every chimney in the village is younger than that, and that simplifies things considerably.
Carol Stream was created as a planned community in the late 1950s by developer Jay Stream, who named it after his daughter. It incorporated in 1959. Before that the land was farmland in DuPage County.
This gives Carol Stream the narrowest housing age range of any town we serve. There is no historic district, no Victorian stock, and no lime-mortar chimneys. The oldest homes date to about 1960 and the newest are still going up.
The upside is predictability. Carol Stream chimney work concentrates on two things: repointing the earliest masonry, which is now hitting the 60 year mark, and maintaining the prefabricated systems that dominate everything built after the mid 1980s.
Each architectural period in Carol Stream has predictable chimney failure modes after enough decades of weather. Here is what to look for.
The oldest chimneys in Carol Stream, and the only ones where full masonry repointing is routinely warranted. Exterior side-wall placement on most of them, so weather-facing joints have eroded while the sheltered elevations remain sound. Crowns from this era were often poured without an adequate drip edge, which is why water gets into the top of the stack.
Stepped rooflines with multiple flashing seams. Failed step flashing is the most common source of interior water staining in this group and is regularly misdiagnosed as a crown or cap problem, because the stain shows up in exactly the same place.
The largest share of Carol Stream housing. Prefabricated metal flue inside a wood-framed chase with a sheet metal cover. Covers reach the end of their service life somewhere around 20 to 25 years, and the failure runs water directly into the framing rather than down a masonry face.
Full chimney replacement is rare in Carol Stream and it is worth being direct about why. Nothing in the village predates 1960, so there is no century-old masonry here reaching the end of its structural life. Almost everything we find is a wear item.
The full chimney, fireplace, and commercial service catalog, dispatched from our Park Ridge office to Carol Stream addresses.
USDA Zone 6a; inland DuPage County climate with 30 to 40 freeze-thaw cycles per winter.
Carol Stream, IL
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