Chimney service built around San Mateo homes
The mid-Peninsula is full of 1920s and 1930s Spanish and Mediterranean homes with stucco-clad chimneys. Stucco hides everything — including the cracked brick and rusted steel behind it — which makes camera inspection especially valuable here.
San Mateo Park and Baywood homes typically have decorative stucco chimneys over brick cores. Foster City is built on bay fill with newer prefabricated fireplaces and metal chases that corrode in salt air. Hillsborough estates often have multiple flues in a single stack, and we frequently find flues cross-connected in ways that push smoke into a second room.
Salt-laden air off the bay eats galvanized chase covers, dampers and caps faster than inland cities. We specify stainless steel for anything exposed on the Peninsula because galvanized parts here can fail in under a decade.