Chimney Sweep Pymble

Eight conservation areas, more than any other suburb we cover. Park Estate, Pymble Heights around Church Street, Fernwalk, Orinoco Street, Pymble Avenue, Mona Vale Road, Telegraph Road and Athol. Ku-ring-gai Council’s Development Control Plan states that fireplaces and chimneys within heritage conservation areas are important building elements and are to be retained. Across most of Pymble that means the chimney stays, and it needs to be maintained properly.

Pymble’s flues start earlier than most of the North Shore. Subdivision began in the early 1880s, ahead of the North Shore railway line in 1890, on Robert Pymble’s 1823 land grant. The result is late Victorian, Federation Queen Anne and inter-war Arts and Crafts stock, in roughly that order, with genuine masonry flues rather than modern steel liners. Telegraph Road includes houses designed by Walter Burley Griffin. When a flue is 130 years old, the brickwork inside it is what needs inspecting, not just the soot.

Pymble has the biggest houses of the five. 58.2 per cent of Pymble dwellings have four or more bedrooms at the 2021 Census, the highest of the Upper North Shore suburbs we cover. More rooms means more fireplaces and more flues in one roof. We sweep, inspect and certify each flue separately, and we quote per flue rather than per house.

Tall trees, and a lot of them. 50.8 per cent tree canopy on Council’s 2020 aerial survey. Pymble and St Ives hold the largest remnants of Blue Gum High Forest, a critically endangered community with less than five per cent of its original extent remaining, and Sydney Blue Gums here reach 30 metres. Dalrymple-Hay Nature Reserve and Sheldon Forest both sit inside the suburb. Debris from trees that tall does not blow off a cowl, it packs into it.

Pymble is on Council’s bushfire risk list. The suburb is named in Ku-ring-gai Council’s bushfire risk reporting, with the Lane Cove River catchment identified as the risk valley and Lane Cove National Park on the south-western boundary. Council reports that ember attack is the main cause of house ignition, arriving up to 30 minutes before the fire front and from 400 to 500 metres out. We check the cowl and the spark arrestor on every Pymble sweep, not just the flue.