SwiftCleanse Chimney ServicesWhat a Chimney Company Won't Remove From an Orlando Chimney
A chimney company will not remove an active chimney swift nest, live wildlife, a bat colony during Florida's closed season, asbestos-suspect liner material, or a live bee colony from your Orlando chimney — and the honest ones will tell you that before they ever put a brush in the flue. Soot, creosote, old debris, abandoned nests, rusted-through chase covers, that's our lane. The rest belongs to licensed wildlife trappers, abatement contractors, gas contractors, beekeepers and roofers. Knowing the boundary saves you money, keeps you legal, and keeps somebody from spraying a hornet's nest into your living room. That last one has happened.
Chimney swift nests stay in the flue until the birds fledge
Chimney swifts are migratory birds protected under federal law, and an active nest with eggs or chicks in it does not come out — not for us, not for anyone. I learned that the humbling way years ago in a College Park bungalow. Homeowner heard chittering, called it "the loudest smoke detector ever," and I went up expecting a squirrel. Reached in with a light and saw a little half-cup of twigs glued to the flue tile with spit. That's what they build with, no joke. Swifts show up around Central Florida in spring and are gone by early fall, so the fix is timing plus a proper cap. We document what's in there with a camera, tell you roughly when the flue should be clear, then come back and sweep out the nesting material and install a stainless cap so it can't happen again next April. Annoying? Sure. But it's a few weeks of noise versus a federal violation, and you didn't hire us to get you in trouble.
Live raccoons, squirrels and rats in a flue go to a licensed wildlife trapper first
We don't trap, handle or relocate live animals out of a chimney — that's wildlife control work, and in Florida it's licensed work. Here's the thing people don't picture: a raccoon that got into a Delaney Park masonry chimney can absolutely get into your firebox, and a scared raccoon in a living room is a different kind of Tuesday. Squirrels are worse in one way, because they'll chew. We've scanned flues off Curry Ford Road with insulation shredded and droppings piled on the smoke shelf. So the sequence is: we scan and show you exactly what's living where, you bring in a trapper to get the animal out alive and gone, then we come behind them and do the part we're actually good at. Cleanup of nesting material, deodorizing, sanitizing what we can reach, camera-checking the liner for chew damage, and capping the top so the next one bounces off. Do it out of order and you pay twice.
Bat colonies in a stucco chase can't be excluded during Florida's maternity season
Bats are protected in Florida, and exclusion work is prohibited during maternity season — roughly mid-April through mid-August — so nobody, us included, should be sealing a bat colony out of your chimney chase in June. Flightless pups get walled in. That's the whole reason for the rule, and it's the state wildlife agency's call, not a company policy we made up to stall you. Bats love the hollow prefab chases on those 1990s and 2000s builds out toward Dr. Phillips and Lake Nona. Warm, dry, dark, gap under a rusted chase cover the size of your thumb. You'll smell it before you see it — ammonia, sharp, worst when the A/C cycles. What we can do in the meantime is scan, photograph, and measure every gap so the exclusion plan is ready to go the day it's legal. Then the chase cover and cap work happens after, permanently. Verify current dates with the FWC, but plan around a closed window.
Asbestos-suspect liner or transite material gets tested, never brushed
If a flue liner, old furnace vent or panel around a firebox looks like asbestos-containing material, we stop and it gets tested by a lab — we don't sweep it, scrape it or haul it away. Running a wire brush down suspect transite pipe is how you turn a contained problem into an airborne one throughout the house. Not happening on my watch. We see this occasionally on older homes around Lake Eola Heights and Colonialtown North where an original heating appliance vented into a masonry chimney and somebody added a liner in the seventies. Okay, that's not quite right — we see suspicious material more often than we see confirmed asbestos, and plenty of it tests clean. Either way the order is the same: photograph it, note it in the written findings, recommend testing, and if it comes back positive it goes to a licensed abatement contractor. Then we finish the chimney work. You get the report either way, with dates and pictures.
Bee and wasp colonies inside a chimney chase belong to a beekeeper or pest pro
An established bee colony or a wasp nest inside a chimney or chase isn't a sweep job, and we won't knock one down and hope for the best. Honeybees especially — a real colony in a chase means wax, comb and honey packed into a cavity, and if it's removed badly you get robbing bees, staining, and a smell that outlasts your patience. Live honeybees generally go to a removal-focused beekeeper. Wasps and yellowjackets typically go to pest control. Either way somebody else clears it before we open anything up. Central Florida gives them the whole year to build, which is why an Audubon Park chase can hold a surprising amount of comb by August. Once it's cleared, we're back for the part that keeps them out: sealing chase penetrations, a properly sized cap with mesh, and a chase cover that isn't rusted through at the seams. Prevention is boring and cheap compared to the alternative.
Gas log and gas line work stops where the licensed gas contractor starts
Chimney companies sweep and inspect the vent, but connecting, moving or repairing gas piping is licensed gas work, and scope varies by company and by what the job actually requires. So if you've got a gas log set in a Baldwin Park firebox and there's a smell of gas, that's a call to your gas utility or a licensed contractor, not to us, and not later. Today. What we do handle is the vent side of the equation. Blocked flue, spalling firebox, damaged cap, poor draft dumping combustion byproducts into the room — that's exactly what a camera scan shows. We've found bird debris sitting on top of gas logs that hadn't been fired in three years, because in Florida a fireplace gets used maybe six evenings a season and then forgotten for eleven months. That's the real risk here. Not heavy use. Neglect plus wildlife plus humidity, working together while you're not looking.
Interior water damage, drywall and roof replacement stay with the trades that own them
We diagnose where water is entering a chimney and we can address chimney-side sources, but we don't repaint your ceiling, replace drywall, or re-roof a house. Storm season sorts Orlando homeowners into two groups fast: the ones with a stain spreading above the mantel, and the ones about to have one. Cracked crown, failed chase cover, rusted cap, flashing pulled loose by wind — those all read identically from your couch. That's why the scan matters. I've stood in a Conway living room where the homeowner was two days from paying for a full roof, and the actual culprit was a chase cover with standing water in it and a seam gone to rust. Fixing the top stopped the leak. The ceiling still needed a drywall crew, and I told him so, because pretending otherwise would have been the fastest way to lose the guy's trust. Our written findings are built to hand to whichever trade takes it from there.
Full chimney demolition is a permit, engineering and coordination job
Tearing out an entire masonry chimney or chase is structural work involving permits, and it isn't something a sweep truck handles on a Thursday afternoon. Some Orlando homeowners genuinely want the thing gone — hasn't been used since the nineties, takes up wall space, one more thing storms can hit. Fair enough. But that job touches the roof deck, sometimes framing, sometimes the wall assembly, and it needs the right contractor and the right paperwork. What we can do is tell you honestly whether removal is even the sensible option, because more often the cheaper answer is sealing and capping an unused flue properly so it stops being a moisture and animal entry point in your roof. That reframe is the whole thing, really. Your fireplace is a hole in the roof first and a heating appliance a distant second. If you want that hole inspected and documented, our chimney services in Orlando start with a camera and a photo report, not a sales pitch. Our minimum service charge is $150, repair pricing lands in normal market ranges, and you see the exact number before anyone touches anything.
Quick questions
Can a chimney sweep remove a bird nest from my Orlando chimney right now?
Not if the nest is active. Chimney swifts are migratory birds protected under federal law, so an occupied nest with eggs or young stays in place until the birds leave on their own, typically by early fall in Central Florida. A chimney company can scan the flue, confirm what's in there, and schedule the sweep and cap installation for after the flue is empty.
Who removes live animals from a chimney in Orlando?
A licensed wildlife trapper removes live raccoons, squirrels and rodents from a chimney in Florida. A chimney company handles the work that comes after: removing nesting material and droppings, sanitizing and deodorizing accessible areas, camera-inspecting the liner for damage, and installing a stainless cap so the flue stops being an open door.
Need it handled now? See Chimney Services in Orlando.