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Chimney Relining in Columbia Falls, MT

What happens when the appliance changes but the chimney it vents into does not.

Wood stove connected into an older masonry chimney in Columbia Falls

Serving Columbia Falls

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A Level 2 inspection is required on a property sale, and it is also required when the appliance or the fuel changes. That second trigger is the one that matters in Columbia Falls, because appliances here get changed constantly and chimneys almost never do.

The pattern repeats: a house heated for decades by an oil or gas furnace, its flue lined and sized for that, and then the furnace goes and a wood stove takes over the heating. Or an old non-certified stove is replaced with a modern EPA-certified one, which runs cooler and cleaner and therefore needs a different flue than the smoky appliance the chimney grew up with. Or someone converts to pellet and connects a four-inch exhaust to a flue built for something four times that.

None of those changes is wrong. All of them change the sizing question, and the chimney does not know the appliance in front of it has been swapped.

Job	Typical price
Insulated stainless liner into an existing flue	$1,800 - $3,200
Small-diameter liner for a pellet appliance	$900 - $1,800
Camera survey of a disused flue before reuse	$180 - $280
Written spec for the new appliance install	included

More on how we do this on the Chimney Relining page, or see everything we cover in Columbia Falls.

The abandoned furnace flue, and why it is not a free chimney

The specific case worth spelling out, because it comes up here more than anywhere else on our patch: a flue that spent thirty years venting an oil furnace, now standing empty, and somebody wants to put a wood stove on it.

It seems like found infrastructure and often it is not. Oil-fired exhaust is cool and wet, and decades of it leaves clay tile saturated with acidic condensate that has been quietly eating the mortar joints from the inside. The flue frequently looks acceptable in the firebox and is degraded where nobody can see. The size is usually wrong as well - furnace flues are sized for a furnace.

The answer is not that it cannot be done, because usually it can. The answer is that it wants a camera run first and, more often than not, a correctly sized insulated liner dropped inside the old one. That is a straightforward job at a predictable price, and it is a great deal cheaper than finding out the hard way in February.

Book chimney relining in Columbia Falls

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