I can only answer the part about having both flues cleaned at the same time. We use a local company who cleans both the stove and furnace flue at the same time. A "one shot deal"... always cheaper to do two than to come back AGAIN to accomplish the same thing! In fact, they generally clean the furnace flue every other year because we have the burner people in every year to change filters and adjust the burner and there isn't much crud to clean out after one year! They "scope 'em out" each visit. I can't answer the other questions because we built our home (15 yrs. ago) and we KNOW about the chimney flues. It's not as though the house is 75 yrs. old and the chimneys haven't been cared for in years... you know? Without some in depth sleuthing (which I'm unwilling to do right now), I can't give you a price, but I'm reasonably sure it was under $200 to clean/scope both. We have it done in late spring, taking advantage of "early bird" discounts and then scheduling NEXT year's visit before they leave. We do the same thing with the burner people (they run about $150). I LOVE the automatic scheduling. The burner people send a bill with next year's app't. on it. I put it on the new calender. The chimney sweeps do the same thing. Our insurance company LOVES us... no increase in premiums because we are so assiduous in attention to the chimney, stove, and boiler.

Marita, when living in St. Paul, we had this predicament: Our house was a 2 story 4-square. The chimney was brick and had 2 flues running up it, one from the furnace and one for the fireplace. The 2 flues were virtually touching. In order to have a flue for a wood burning fire, we would have had to remove brick midway up the outside of the chimney, then break up the pieces of the fireplace flue and rebuild it. However, because the 2 flues were almost touching, the restoration fellow said that the odds were high that the chimney flue would also break in the process (both flues were made of 2 ft long pieces of terra cotta tile, mortared together). Then through the outside opening and also from inside the living room, they would reline the smoke chamber which is between the flue and the firebox. We needed the smoke chamber relined as the parging had crumbled off in chunks from it's walls. Our estimate was to rebuild both flues with a compacted volcanic ash product, to reline the smoke chamber and then use the old brick to close up the hole in the chimney. We had already had our firebox tuckpointed for $500 (I think that was the amount). The estimate we received for the flue/smoke chamber was $7500 and it was given in the fall of 2003. We didn't get the work done that fall, and ended up moving in the fall of 04 so the work was never done. We had other companies out and were told by all that just dropping a metal liner would not provide the heat protection needed. The estimate I've described was also high because of the 2 flues and because we were concerned with restoring the chimney brick so that it didn't look patched. Yes, we about gagged when we got the estimate but for that chimney, we really wouldn't have had a choice. Good luck with yours. I would definitely get a few estimates and spend some internet time learning about fireplace and chimney construction. I can't find any records yet of who we got estimates from. Is your situation anything like this?

A couple of shops were also installers so the person that came out was the sales/installer. A few others had separate sales and installers. They would send sales out to do the measuring, provide an estimate and close the deal before recommending an installer. We did keep the windows+door purchasing process sort of independent of the installer because we wanted a good licensed contractor with a BBB history, not just a windows installer. Some shops laughed at us and said it would cost more but we did not care. If a shop has no association with such a contractor, we would just find our own. In your case, if the shop insists on installing, it seems perfectly reasonable to interview the "installers" before buying from that shop. We have met many a shop with a licensed "general contractor" but the "contractor" was never on the job site, never visited the site. The crew that came out was just a crew of workers. We had bad experience with that sort of approach in the past. This time, we wanted a licensed contractor who would actually be ON THE JOB at our site. We are in northern CA (just a few miles southeast of the Summit Fire that is burning out of control right now) where summer heat can be painful and winter cold tolerable. We have low-SHGC low-E II coating. In your case, a mid-SHGC low E II may work. The following is a link to a site that can give decent recommendation for your specific region. http://www.efficientwindows.org/ For Kansas City, the following shows up and you can tweak it more to fit your specific location for a better look: http://www.efficientwindows.org/city_all.cfm?new=E&prodtype=WN&id=20 Good luck!

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