News

We’re so excited… the 44th Annual Riverside Avondale Preservation Spring Tour of Homes is April 14-15, 2018!Each spring, select residents of this beautiful area of Jacksonville open their homes to benefit RAP, a local grassroots organization dedicated to the preservation of historical assets in Riverside and Avondale.Chimney Champions® is a proud supporter of this event, and will have a representative present in one of the tour homes for the entire weekend to answer all your chimney related questions!For more information on the event, including a list of the homes, please visit https://raphometour.com/

“I saw flames, smoke; I couldn’t breathe. I had to slide down the stairs, started to lose consciousness….and I didn’t know where the flames were coming from!”That’s what Timothy Zapata told Jacksonville firefighters after they rescued him from his burning home off St. Johns Bluff Road according to News4Jax reporters.Fortunately for Zapata he was awake when his home began to burn, “A bowl of cereal saved my life… I mean, had I gone to bed, I would have probably died from smoke inhalation.” The fire marshal told Zapata it looked like a bad flue in the fireplace was the culprit.

If you’re like me, you are on a constant quest to reduce the monthly expenses of home ownership. Every tip or technique discovered to reduce the expenses in my own home are shared with my clients and radio show listeners. It is my hope that you freely share them with your friends and family to enhance their home ownership experience, while reducing their costs.Among the most misunderstood and frustrating of homeowner expenses is insurance. Between legislative actions in Tallahassee and the response by the insurance companies it’s at times a daunting challenge just to get insurance, let alone at an affordable rate.

You are no doubt reading this in the cool comfort of your home, auto, or office. For that comfort you can thank Willis Carrier.To go back a ways and start the Carrier story off right, you should know the first of the Carrier clan in America was a political refugee from England who assumed the name “Thomas Carrier” when he arrived in Massachusetts in 1663. Thomas married Martha Allen and they together produced two sons.Mrs. Carrier was involved in an unpleasant dispute over real estate with the town fathers in Andover, Massachusetts. The result of the dispute was that she was accused of being a witch. Her two sons aged 10 and 13 were hung by their heels until they testified that their mother was a witch!  On August 19th 1692, she was arrested, convicted and hanged on Salem’s Gallows Hill.

A Chimney Inspector’s Perspective on the History of Christmas Lights based on information from the Library of Congress:Thomas Edison, the inventor of the first successful practical light bulb, created the very first strand of electric lights. During the Christmas season of 1880, these strands were strung around the outside of his Menlo Park Laboratory. Railroad passengers traveling by the laboratory got their first look at an electrical light display. But it would take almost forty years for electric Christmas lights to become the tradition that we all know and love.