Chimney Sweep in Worthing

Central Worthing and East Worthing (BN11): terraces and converted flats around the town centre, Heene and the seafront often share stacks between properties. Shared and offset flues get swept methodically from the appliance up, with the pot and flaunching checked from ground level before I start.

Goring-by-Sea and Ferring side (BN12): mostly 1930s semis and bungalows, many with a stove retro-fitted into an original fireplace. I check the liner, register plate access and baffle on these as standard — badly fitted register plates are the single most common thing I find in Goring.

Durrington, Salvington and Findon Valley (BN13): these sit higher and catch more wind off the Downs, so poor draw and rain ingress come up often. Every visit finishes with a smoke draw test so you know the flue is pulling properly before winter.

Broadwater and Tarring (BN14): Victorian and Edwardian brick flues with original parging. These need a careful hand rather than a power brush, and I'll tell you plainly if the parging or pot needs attention rather than quietly working around it.

Much of Worthing's housing went up between the 1870s and the 1910s, and those original chimneys are still in daily use. A typical Victorian terrace off Chapel Road or Clifton Road has a narrow 9in x 9in brick flue that doglegs around the stack to serve two or three fireplaces, with lime parging rather than a liner between the brickwork and the smoke. That parging is what keeps the flue gas-tight, and after 130 years of heat cycling it can be cracked, missing or sitting in a pile at the base of the stack.

Edwardian houses around Broadwater, Tarring and Heene tend to have slightly wider flues and taller stacks, which draw well but hold a lot more soot between sweeps. Where a modern stove has been dropped into one of these openings without a liner, the flue is usually far too big for the appliance: the gases cool on the way up, condense as tar, and the fire never seems to get going. If that sounds like yours, I'll say so and explain whether lining it is worth the money.

On period flues I sweep from the appliance upwards with rods and rotary heads matched to the flue size — no power brushing that can strip soft old parging — and I check the pot, flaunching and stack from ground level before I start. Bird nests in disused pots, failed haunching after the salt-laden winds off the Channel and shared flues venting into a neighbour's room are the three faults I find most often in Worthing's older stock.

Whether it's a seafront conversion, a Broadwater semi or a Durrington bungalow, the price is the same: £70 for an open fire, £75 for a stove, with a HETAS certificate emailed the same day.