Chimney repair
across Longford
Old stock, turf-tarred flues, and houses coming back into use after years standing empty. Free CCTV survey, insurance claims handled start to finish, certificate the day we finish.
The county that built the least, and kept the most
Search for a chimney man in Longford and you will be offered the midlands. One competitor covers Athlone, Tullamore, Mullingar and Portlaoise from a single page; another has a page called, literally, "The Midlands". They are roofing companies, and none of them has a page about Longford.
Which is a pity, because the census makes Longford unusually easy to describe, and what it describes is a county with old chimneys.
Longford built less than anywhere else in this part of the country. Census 2022 put the housing stock at 19,195 dwellings, up 3% from 18,591 in 2016. The national rise over the same period was 5%. Fewer new houses means a higher proportion of old ones, and old houses have flues built for open fires and lined with nothing.
It burns more oil than almost anywhere. 56.6% of Longford households use oil for central heating, well clear of the national 39%. For context the highest in the State is Monaghan at 74.8% and the lowest is Dublin City at 4.4%.
And it still burns a lot of turf. 14.3% of households heat mainly with peat including turf, against 3.7% nationally. That is close to four times the national rate, and only Offaly, Roscommon and Galway are higher.
Straight about distance, because this is one of the furthest counties on the list: the van works out of Clonegall, Co. Carlow, and Longford is roughly an hour and three quarters. For a rebuild, a reline or an insurance job across several days that is workable. For a small call-out it is not, and you will be told so on the phone. Longford jobs get grouped onto one run where the dates allow it.
A county changing fuel, with the flues it already had
In December 2020 the Lough Ree Power station at Lanesborough, on the Longford and Roscommon border, ceased production. It was the last peat-fired station in the country to stop. The closure had been scheduled for 2027 and was brought forward under the EU Just Transition programme, ESB put €5 million into the midlands Just Transition Fund, and Longford County Council needed a €1.3 million top-up to cover the rates it no longer collected.
That is the industrial version of something happening in individual houses across the county, and it has a direct consequence for chimneys that nobody writes about.
Households here are changing fuel, and the flue does not change with them. A house that burned turf for forty years and switches to seasoned timber, or drops a stove into an open fireplace, is running a new fuel up an old flue.
The size requirement does not move. Under TGD J Table 2 a closed appliance up to 20 kW needs at least 150 mm internal diameter for timber and for peat alike. What moves is the risk on the first few fires.
Years of turf burning lay down tar, because turf carries moisture and burns cooler than seasoned hardwood, so the gases condense higher in the flue. Well seasoned timber burns hotter. A hotter fire in a flue with existing tar deposits is the standard set-up for a chimney fire, and the household doing everything right by moving to a cleaner fuel is exactly the household at risk.
So the sensible order is: sweep and camera first, change fuel second. It is an hour, and it is the difference between a good decision and an expensive one.
934 dwellings stood empty across two censuses
Census 2022 recorded 2,338 vacant dwellings in Longford. Against a total stock of 19,195 that is 12.2% of the county, and it is down 17% from 2,824 in 2016, so the direction is right.
The number underneath it is the interesting one. 934 dwellings were recorded vacant in the 2016 census and again in 2022. That is roughly one dwelling in twenty in the county standing empty across two counts, six years apart, and a great many of them are now being bought and brought back into use.
A flue that has not been lit in six years or more is a different proposition from one in daily use.
Jackdaws. An unused pot is an attractive nest site, and a jackdaw nest is the single most common cause of a smoke-back on a first fire in a renovated house. They are also substantial: a nest can fill a metre or more of flue.
Nothing is documented. No sweeping history, no record of the flue's condition, and nothing an insurer can be shown if something goes wrong later. That is an hour's work to fix at the start and awkward to fix afterwards.
Cold chimneys deteriorate faster than working ones. A stack unheated for six winters has had no warm flue drying it from the inside, so frost damage accumulates. It also accumulates unobserved, because nobody was in the house to see the damp patch appear on the bedroom ceiling.
If you have bought one of these, the sequence is: camera down the flue, then light the fire. Not the other way round.
Two-storey stone and render, and farmhouse flues built for turf
With stock up only 3% in six years, the working assumption in Longford is an older house rather than a newer one, and the housing splits into two rough types.
Two-storey stone-and-render houses in and around Longford town, Edgeworthstown, Granard, Ballymahon, Newtownforbes and Lanesborough. The exposed masonry above the roofline takes the brunt of the weather on these, and it is usually the head of the stack that fails rather than anything lower down.
Rural farmhouses with original brick or concrete flues, built before stainless liners became standard. These are the ones where the flue is genuinely enormous, because it was built to serve an open turf fire and an open turf fire needed that volume. Drop a modern stove into one and it cannot fill it. The gases slow, cool and condense inside the masonry rather than leaving the top, and that condensate is acidic.
The midlands weather does the rest. Moisture and freeze-thaw cycling is the ordinary condition here: masonry saturates, then freezes, and expands from inside the pore structure. On an already tired stack that is what turns a hairline crack in the flaunching into a saturated chimney over a couple of winters.
None of that makes a Longford chimney a problem. It means the stock is old enough that the inspection is worth doing on a schedule rather than after a symptom appears.
Why Longford chimneys fail
Tar accumulation from turf
The county-defining one, at 14.3% of households on peat against 3.7% nationally. Turf carries moisture and burns at a lower flame temperature than seasoned hardwood, so the gases cool sooner on the way up and lay down tar higher in the flue. On camera it shows as a glossy black deposit rather than the loose soot people expect, and once hardened it does not come off with a brush alone. Tar is what burns in a chimney fire.
Sulphate attack, and why stacks lean
Burning turf and coal produces sulphates. In an unlined flue those gases soak into the mortar joints and over years react with the cement and expand it. The joints swell, the stack grows unevenly and it starts to lean, almost always away from the prevailing wind because that face stays wet longest. It does not stop and it cannot be pointed out of existence. On a county of old unlined flues it is the most common structural finding.
Oversize flues serving small stoves
Covered above and worth repeating, because in Longford it is the single most frequent reason relining turns out to be necessary. A flue built for an open turf fire is far wider than a 5 kW stove can fill. The gases never reach the top warm enough to leave cleanly, so they condense in the masonry instead. An oversize flue is a genuine safety problem, not merely an inefficiency.
Flaunching, the most common single failure
Flaunching is the sloped mortar cap that beds the pots and sheds water off the top of the stack. It is the most exposed mortar on the building and it goes first everywhere. When it cracks, rain runs down inside the masonry instead of off the top, and the first sign indoors is a damp patch high on a chimney breast after heavy rain.
Mortar fillets instead of lead flashing
Where the stack passes through the slates there should be lead soakers and a stepped flashing dressed into the mortar joints. A great many older Longford houses have a mortar fillet instead, and a mortar fillet cracks within a few winters. Water then tracks into the roof timbers, which is how a chimney problem quietly becomes a roof problem.
Ventilation, even here
Longford has less new housing than anywhere else in this group, but it has some, and every new house is airtight. TGD J 4.2.1 requires 6,500 mm² of permanent free vent area for any non-room-sealed solid fuel appliance, plus 550 mm² per kilowatt above 5 kW, so an 8 kW stove needs 8,150 mm². There is no under-5kW exemption in Ireland; that is UK Approved Document J. The same thing happens to older houses after new windows go in.
What chimney damage looks like from inside the house
Almost nobody rings about a chimney. They ring about something else that turns out to be the chimney.
- →The fire is harder to light than it used to be. In a turf-burning house that usually means tar narrowing the flue. It comes on gradually enough that people adapt to it rather than noticing it.
- →A damp patch high on the chimney breast. Usually flaunching or flashing. It appears after heavy rain and fades between, which is why people live with it for a year.
- →Twigs in the grate in spring. A jackdaw nest above, and the classic finding in a house that has been standing empty.
- →Debris in the grate. Mortar and brick fragments coming down mean the inside of the flue is breaking up.
- →The stack looks off plumb. Sight it against the gable on a clear day. If it is leaning, stop using the fire.
- →A roaring sound with no obvious cause. That is a chimney fire in progress. Ring 999, then have the flue inspected before it is used again. A chimney fire cracks liners and masonry even when the house comes through fine.
A plain word on smoke alarms while we are here. Census 2022 recorded 806 Longford homes with no smoke alarm at all. If yours is one of them and you burn solid fuel, that is the cheapest thing on this page to put right, and it is not a job that needs us.
If you are unsure what you are looking at, the photo-based damage assessment gives a straight answer before anybody visits.
Every type of chimney repair, done properly
Relining. A stainless liner sized for the appliance, fed from the top, connected at the stove and sealed at the pot. Under TGD J Table 2 a closed appliance up to 20 kW burning timber, peat or bituminous coal needs at least 150 mm internal diameter; only smokeless fuel or wood pellets may drop to 125 mm. In this county the usual reason for a liner is an oversize flue rather than a damaged one.
Tar removal. Hardened tar does not come off with a brush. It needs rotary work and sometimes chemical treatment first. On a badly loaded flue, relining is the cheaper answer than repeated attempts to clean it.
Partial rebuild. The stack taken down to sound masonry above roof level and rebuilt, which on a weathered two-storey stone-and-render house is usually the right call because the damage concentrates in the exposed head.
Full rebuild. Down to the roofline and back up, with new flaunching, new pots and new lead.
Repointing in the correct mortar. Too hard a mix traps moisture behind a rigid face, and in a freeze-thaw climate the next frost then pushes the stone apart rather than the joint. The joint is meant to be the sacrificial part.
Flaunching renewal. The mortar cap cut out and recast to the correct fall, pots rebedded. Cheap, quick, and it prevents the expensive job.
Lead flashing. Proper code lead, stepped and dressed into the joints with soakers under the slates, replacing the mortar fillet that is so common on the older stock here.
Ventilation corrections. Cutting in a permanent vent to the 6,500 mm² minimum, or more where the output demands it.
Fire and storm damage. Assessed, documented and rebuilt, with the insurance handled in parallel. See insurance and fire damage.
More detail on the main chimney repairs page and the lining and cleaning page.
What chimney repair costs in Longford
Real ranges, including VAT, labour, materials, scaffold or hoist where needed, waste away and the certificate.
| Work | Typical range |
|---|---|
| CCTV survey | Free with any repair |
| Flaunching renewal | €450 – €1,100 |
| Lead flashing | €600 – €1,400 |
| Relining | €1,400 – €2,800 |
| Partial rebuild, above roof level | €2,000 – €4,500 |
| Full rebuild, single stack | €3,500 – €8,000 |
| Full rebuild, double stack | €8,000 – €14,000 |
| Insurance excess on an approved claim | €200 – €300 |
A farmhouse outside Ballymahon, Drumlish or Killashee with a yard to set up in sits at the bottom of its band. A tall stack in the middle of Longford town with no rear access, needing scaffold and a licence from Longford County Council to stand it on a public footpath, sits at the top. Nobody can tell you which you have over the phone, which is why the survey is free and the quote follows in writing.
Indicative only. An exact figure follows the survey, in writing, before any work starts.
We handle the Longford claim from start to finish
Storm damage and chimney fires are covered by most Irish household policies. Gradual deterioration is not. That single distinction decides most claims, and it gets decided by how the damage is documented rather than by what happened on the roof.
The distinction bites harder in a turf county. A chimney fire is a covered event, and the tar that fed it accumulated gradually. Documenting the fire damage properly, while it is fresh and before anything is touched, is what keeps a claim on the right side of the line.
In practice that means CCTV footage of the flue, photographs of the stack before anything is disturbed, a written report describing the mechanism of failure, and an itemised costing set out the way loss adjusters expect. Then Johnny deals with the adjuster directly, so you are not the one explaining flue liners over the phone to somebody in an office.
If you have had a chimney fire, or think you might have, do not use the fire or stove again until the flue has been inspected. Many chimney fires burn inside the flue without visible flames and leave cracked liners and damaged masonry behind them, so the house looks fine and the chimney is not.
On an approved claim you pay your excess, typically €200 – €300, and nothing else.
One thing worth saying plainly, because it gets repeated as fact and it is not: no Irish insurer makes annual sweeping a condition of cover. Sweeping is worth doing and a record of it helps a claim, but nobody voids a policy over a missed year.
Full detail on insurance and fire damage work, and on how a claim actually runs.
What needs doing now, and what can wait until spring
| Finding | How urgent |
|---|---|
| After a chimney fire | Do not relight until inspected |
| Leaning stack | Stop using the fire. Same week. |
| Heavy tar visible on camera | Before the next heating season |
| About to switch from turf to timber | Sweep and camera before the change |
| First fire in a house that stood empty | Survey before lighting, not after |
| Mortar fillet where the lead should be | Before winter |
| Cracked flaunching, no damp yet | This year, not this week |
| Pointing tired but sound | Monitor. Often several years left |
Rows four and five are the two that are specifically Longford-shaped, and they are the two most likely to be skipped, because in both cases the household is doing something positive and the chimney is the last thing on the list.
Every corner of the county
Longford uses a single Eircode routing key, N39, which is unusual and reflects how compact the county is. Lanesborough sits on the Roscommon border and Granard is close to the Cavan line, so addresses at the edges are not always where people assume.
| Key | Post town |
|---|---|
| N39 | Longford (the county's own routing key) |
Because the trip is a long one, Longford work gets batched. If you are booking and you know a neighbour or a family member needs something looked at as well, say so and both get quoted in the one visit.
One tradesman, not a call centre
Johnny Roberts runs J.Roberts Solid Fuel Services on his own out of Clonegall, Co. Carlow. Ring the number and you get him. The person who surveys your chimney is the person who does the work.
Every top result for chimney work in this part of the country is a roofing company, and most of them treat the midlands as one place. A roofer sees the top of a roof; here the flue is the whole trade. That is the difference, and it is checkable rather than a boast.
There is no statutory register for solid fuel work in Ireland, so what is actually checkable is the insurance, the work itself and the certificate. All three are available to see.
Chimney repair in Longford. FAQ
Do you actually travel to Longford?
Yes, for work that justifies the trip, and it is worth being straight about the distance. The van works out of Clonegall in Co. Carlow and Longford is roughly an hour and three quarters. For a rebuild, a reline or an insurance job running across several days that is workable. For a small one-off call-out it is not sensible and you will be told so on the phone rather than after a wasted morning. Longford jobs get grouped onto one run where the dates allow it, so if a neighbour or a family member needs work too, mention it and both get quoted in the one visit.
We are switching from turf to timber. Does that change the chimney?
Not the size of it. Under TGD J Table 2 a closed appliance up to 20 kW needs at least 150 mm internal diameter for timber and for peat alike, so the requirement does not move. What changes is the risk on the first few fires. Years of turf burning lay down tar, and well seasoned timber burns hotter than turf does. A hotter fire in a flue with existing tar deposits is the classic set-up for a chimney fire. So the honest advice when a household switches fuel is to have the flue swept and looked at with a camera before the change rather than after it. This is a live question in Longford in a way it is not in most counties.
Does burning turf damage a chimney?
It does not damage a sound flue, but it loads one faster than timber does. Census 2022 recorded 14.3% of Longford households heating mainly with peat including turf, against 3.7% nationally, which is close to four times the national rate. Turf carries moisture and burns at a lower flame temperature than seasoned hardwood, so the gases cool sooner on the way up and deposit tar higher in the flue. The consequence is a shorter sweeping interval than a timber-burning house needs, not a reason to stop burning turf.
The house was empty for years before we bought it. What should we check?
The flue, before you light anything, and in this county that advice applies more often than anywhere else on the site. Census 2022 recorded 2,338 vacant dwellings in Longford, about 12.2% of the county's stock, and 934 of those were recorded vacant in the 2016 census as well. That is roughly one dwelling in twenty standing empty across two counts. A dormant flue collects jackdaw nests, and a nest is the single most common cause of a smoke-back on a first fire. There is also no sweeping record and nothing documented for an insurer. An hour with a camera before the first fire is the cheapest part of the purchase.
How much does a chimney rebuild cost in Longford?
A partial rebuild above roof level typically runs €2,000 to €4,500. A single stack from the roofline is €3,500 to €8,000. A double stack is €8,000 to €14,000. Relining is €1,400 to €2,800. The survey is free and nothing is quoted until a camera has been down the flue. A farmhouse outside Ballymahon or Drumlish with a yard to work from sits at the bottom of its band; a tall stack in the middle of Longford town with no rear access sits at the top, because of scaffold.
My chimney is leaning. Is that urgent?
Treat it as urgent. It is usually sulphate attack, where flue gases have soaked into the mortar over years and expanded it, and it almost always leans away from the prevailing wind because that face stays wet longest. It does not correct itself and it does not stop. Stop using the fire and ring somebody the same week. On a county of older houses that have burned turf in unlined flues for decades, this is the most common structural finding.
Why is there a damp patch on the chimney breast upstairs?
Usually one of three things. Failed flaunching, the mortar cap on top of the stack, which cracks and lets water straight down through the masonry. Failed lead flashing where the stack passes through the roof, and a lot of older Longford houses have a mortar fillet there instead of proper lead. Or an unlined flue, where condensing gases carry moisture into the masonry, which is the one that turf makes more likely. A survey separates them quickly and they need completely different fixes.
Does my flue have to be lined?
Not automatically. TGD J requires the flue to be suitable for the appliance, not lined as a matter of routine. Lining becomes necessary where the flue is oversize for the stove, leaks between floors, or shows cracking on camera. Longford has a lot of older rural farmhouses with original brick or concrete flues built before stainless liners were standard, and a wide flue built for an open turf fire will not be filled by a small stove. The gases then cool and condense inside the masonry instead of leaving. An oversize flue is a safety problem, not just an inefficiency.
What does the free survey involve?
About an hour. A look at the stack from the roof, a CCTV camera down the flue, a check of the flaunching, the pots and the lead flashing where the stack meets the slates, and a look at the fireplace and any damp staining inside. You get told what is wrong, what needs doing now and what can safely wait until spring. No charge, and the footage is yours to keep whether or not you use us.
Will insurance cover the damage?
It depends on the mechanism rather than the appearance. Most Irish household policies cover storm damage and chimney fires and exclude gradual deterioration, and that single distinction decides most claims. It gets decided by how the damage is documented, which is why the CCTV footage and the photographs of the stack before anything is touched matter more than anything said afterwards. On an approved claim you pay your excess, typically €200 to €300, and nothing else. One thing worth saying plainly because it gets repeated as fact: no Irish insurer makes annual sweeping a condition of cover.
Is there a registration scheme for chimney work in Ireland?
No. There is no statutory register for solid fuel chimney work in the Republic. HETAS withdrew from Ireland in March 2022 and is a UK body in any case, and DEFRA exemption and Smoke Control Areas are UK law that does not apply here. Gas has RGI; solid fuel has nothing equivalent. What you can actually check is public liability insurance, previous work in your own area, and the certificate issued at the end. Ask any contractor for all three.
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Chimney trouble in Longford?
The survey is free and a camera goes down the flue before anybody quotes. If you have just bought a house that stood empty, or you are about to change fuel, that is the moment to ring rather than after the first fire.