Chimney sweep and repair in Union County, NJ

What we find across Union County

Both of Union County’s service cities are old and dense by New Jersey standards, and the chimney work follows the housing stock rather than the calendar. In Elizabeth, 86 percent of housing sits in buildings of two units or more, with two-unit properties the single largest category. A shared masonry stack serving two households’ appliances is the normal condition there. Gas heats 85.7 percent of Elizabeth’s households and 76.0 percent of Plainfield’s, but in both cities the housing predates that shift, so an atmospheric gas appliance is often venting into a flue laid out for something else. Plainfield keeps more of its oil heat, 618 households, more than double Elizabeth’s share, and adds a documented case of what happens when nobody checks a rental building for years: the 2023 condemnation of 49 units on West 7th Street over uncapped gas conductors, which pushed the city into requiring an annual fire-and-safety inspection on every rental unit. Elizabeth and Plainfield each run their own construction office, and neither defers to the county.