Flue relining
Sweep & inspection
Caps & crowns
Masonry repair
Gas fireplace serviceLevel 1 sweep and inspection to the NFPA 211 annual standard - flue, crown, cap, and flashing checked and photographed
Chimney sweep logs do not sweep chimneys. They loosen some creosote - which then falls where a brush and vacuum still have to collect it.
Famco Flue Liner Replacement: The Long Beach Owner’s Guide
We stock and install Famco-compatible flue liner replacement in Long Beach, with most installed jobs running $1,850 to $4,600 depending on liner length, diameter, and whether the old liner fights us on the way out. If your chimney has a Famco liner that’s cracked, delaminating, or letting exhaust leak into the house, we can usually map the full scope with a camera inspection and have the swap done within a week. The way most Long Beach homeowners discover this problem is through one of three things: a musty soot smell that won’t go away, flue tile pieces showing up at the bottom of the firebox, or a Level 2 inspection that comes back with a failed liner after a chimney fire or years of salt-air exposure.
Which Famco Models This Applies To
Famco makes rigid stainless steel chimney liners in a handful of diameters and grades and the replacement part you need depends on two things: the inner diameter of your existing liner and whether your appliance is wood-burning or gas. Famco liners typically run 4″ through 12″ interior diameter, with 5.5″ and 6″ being the most common sizes we see in Long Beach chimneys tied to older masonry fireplaces in neighborhoods like Belmont Shore and Naples. The compatibility gotcha with Famco specifically is that their older liners were sometimes installed as direct-replacement sections rather than a continuous welded pipe, so you can have a 6″ Famco liner that’s actually made up of interlocking 2-foot or 4-foot segments, and the failure point is almost always at the joint, not the body of the pipe.
When you’re identifying what you have, look for a metal tag or etched stamp near the top termination cap; it usually carries the Famco name, a diameter marking like “6” or “6SS,” and sometimes a date code. If the tag is gone or corroded, we measure the inner diameter directly during the inspection and match against current Famco stock plus quality equivalents from DuraFlex, HeatShield, and Gelco. One thing to know up front: Flint Chimney Co Long Beach is an independent service provider, not affiliated with Famco, so if your liner is still under a manufacturer’s warranty we’ll tell you to file that claim first and we can install whatever replacement they send. If it’s out of warranty, which is most of what we see, aftermarket 316L stainless is typically the smarter buy than OEM pricing by a meaningful margin.
Styles & brands we work with





Signs Your Famco Flue Liner Replacement Is Failing
- Soot odor inside the house on damp days. A compromised liner lets combustion gases and particulate bleed into the chimney cavity, and humidity in Long Beach air makes that smell carry further inside, especially in older homes around Bluff Park and Alamitos Heights.
- Flue tile chips or metal flakes at the base of the firebox. This is liner material spalling off because the stainless has been overheated at some point, usually after a chimney fire or years of corrosive creosote buildup eating at the joints.
- Visible rust staining on walls or ceiling adjacent to the chimney chase. That points to moisture getting through the liner or a failed joint, and in coastal Long Beach the salt-laden air accelerates corrosion faster than inland areas by a noticeable margin.
- Chimney inspection report shows gaps, cracks, or liner separation on camera. We run a camera up every flue we inspect, and the footage doesn’t lie: a separated Famco joint reads clearly on the report, and you should insist on seeing that footage before anyone tells you a liner is shot.
- Appliances venting slower than they used to. A partially collapsed or heavily coated liner reduces draft, which on a gas appliance can show up as lazy flame lift or intermittent rollout, and that’s a carbon monoxide exposure path you don’t want to wait on.
See the difference
Before
After
Before
After
Before
AfterReplacement Cost & What’s Included
In Long Beach, a Famco flue liner replacement runs between $1,850 and $4,600 installed, and the big swing factors are liner diameter and overall flue length. A short 15-foot run with a 6″ liner in a single-story home in Bixby Knolls sits at the low end; a 35-foot flue in a two-story Craftsman in Belmont Heights with a 8″ liner and a tricky termination-cap rebuild hits the high end. Our price is line-itemed before any work starts so the number on the written quote is the number on the invoice, and it includes removal of the failed liner, the new liner, the termination cap, and a full camera verification after installation. Every liner replacement we perform carries the 365-Day Done Right Promise: a written guarantee valid for one full year, with a free return visit if a covered repair fails within that period. That’s the Garrison Standard, and it applies to every job Hank Delano’s crew runs in Long Beach, no exceptions.
DIY or Call Us?
What you can safely do yourself is read the inspection report, look at the camera footage, and ask hard questions. What you should not do yourself is drop a new liner down a two-story flue with a hoist, a cone, and a prayer, because a liner that hangs up on a clay tile offset or a rough mortar joint can kink, tear, or wedge itself halfway down, and then you’ve got a worse problem than you started with. The lift, the feed, the termination cap sealing, and the post-installation draft test are all points where DIY goes wrong, and a botched liner job is a fire and carbon monoxide risk, not a cosmetic issue. If your Famco liner is failing, call us at (562) 317-7262 and we’ll get a camera in there, show you exactly what’s failing, and quote the replacement in writing before anything comes off the truck.
FAQs
In Long Beach’s salt-air environment, a 316L stainless Famco liner typically lasts 15 to 25 years before corrosion or joint failure becomes a real concern, and we see the shorter end of that range more often in homes within a mile or two of the water in Naples, Belmont Shore, and the Peninsula. The lifespan killer here isn’t usually the liner body; it’s the joints and the termination cap, which are the first things to go. If your liner is past 15 years and a camera inspection shows pitting or separation at the joints, plan for replacement before it becomes an emergency. Call (562) 317-7262 for a free estimate if you’re not sure where your liner stands.
A Famco liner can sometimes be repaired with a patch section if the damage is isolated to a single joint or a short segment near the top, but most failures we see in Long Beach involve corrosion spread across multiple joints, at which point replacement is the honest call. If we can safely patch it and extend the liner’s life by a few years, we’ll quote that option and show you the camera footage to back it up; if a patch would just kick the problem down the road, we’ll tell you that plainly. That’s the whole point of the inspection: you see what we see, and the recommendation is never inflated to sell a bigger job.
A typical Famco flue liner replacement in Long Beach takes 4 to 6 hours from setup to final camera verification, with the old liner extraction usually eating the most time on older chimneys. If the flue has significant offsets, a partially collapsed liner, or a termination cap that’s rust-welded in place, it can run a full day. We’ll give you a written time window before the job starts, and our uniformed, background-checked technicians don’t leave until the draft test and camera pass are both done.
Yes, we keep the most common Famco liner diameters on the truck, 6″ and 8″ primarily, along with termination caps and connector bands, and we stock equivalent 316L stainless from DuraFlex, HeatShield, and Gelco when the job calls for a different spec than what Famco currently ships. If your liner is an unusual diameter or length, we order it and typically have it in hand within three to five business days. For an exact match and a written quote, call (562) 317-7262 and we’ll get you scheduled for an inspection.
Written by Hank Delano, Owner, Flint Chimney Co Long Beach at Flint Chimney Co Long Beach, serving Long Beach and nearby areas.
Need a Famco flue liner replacement in Long Beach? Call (562) 317-7262 for a free estimate, and we’ll put the scope, price, and guarantee in writing before any work begins.