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Notes from the roof

San Francisco and Bay Area chimney questions, answered plainly — each article links to one service page and nowhere else.

  1. New chimney caps on a fog-shrouded San Francisco rooftop with the bay and the East Bay hills visible in the distanceAugust 2026What San Francisco’s fog actually does to a chimneyA San Francisco chimney can corrode and crack on a week with zero measurable rainfall, because the coastal fog rolling through the Golden Gate behaves nothing like a rainstorm. Here is why fog-hours matter more than rain totals, and where to look first.
  2. New chimney caps on a fog-shrouded San Francisco rooftop with the bay and the East Bay hills visible in the distanceAugust 2026Spare the Air days and your fireplaceA Bay Area Spare the Air alert is a mandatory, enforceable ban on wood burning across all nine counties at once, not a suggestion. Here is exactly what it covers, who is exempt, and — importantly — what it has nothing to do with.
  3. A technician in a navy polo kneeling at a brick firebox in a San Francisco Victorian rowhouse living room with drop cloths laid over the floorJuly 2026Unreinforced masonry chimneys and San Francisco’s earthquake riskSan Francisco’s Victorian and Edwardian brick chimneys were built before any seismic bracing requirement existed. Here is what that means structurally, what the region’s two major faults have to do with it, and what a real inspection looks for.
  4. Several new stainless steel chimney caps with spark-arrestor mesh screens laid out on a work surface before installation in San FranciscoJuly 2026Spark arrestor rules in wildfire-era CaliforniaA spark arrestor is not a decorative extra on a California chimney — it is a fire-code requirement with specific mesh and sizing rules, sharpened further in Wildland-Urban Interface areas. Here is what the code actually says.
  5. A mason repointing eroded mortar joints on a brick chimney of a San Francisco Victorian homeJuly 2026When chimney work in San Francisco needs a permitSan Francisco’s Department of Building Inspection does not require a permit for straightforward repointing, but the line moves fast once a repair touches structural framing or seismic bracing. Here is what actually triggers one.
  6. An inspection camera being fed into a brick chimney flue in a Craftsman-era Oakland home near RockridgeJune 2026Eucalyptus, Monterey pine and why Bay Area caps clog earlyEucalyptus trees, planted across the Bay Area by the thousands starting in the early 1900s, shed leathery, resinous debris essentially year-round — a genuinely regional chimney-cap problem most of the country never deals with. Here is the mechanism and the fix.
  7. A freshly poured concrete chimney crown with a sloped surface and a drip edge, seen from a San Francisco rooftop with fog in the backgroundJune 2026What changes the scope of a chimney repairTwo chimneys with a similar-looking crack can need very different repairs. Here are the real factors — access, materials, structure and permitting — that actually change the scope of the work, without a single price attached to any of them.