Chimney care for Dartmouth: old village houses, coastal estates and oil heat

Dartmouth’s oldest chimneys are among the oldest in the area. The Massachusetts Historical Commission’s survey records a center-chimney cottage and a center-chimney house at Russells Mills both dated 1723, and describes most Colonial-era houses as the traditional center-chimney type, with one massive stack carrying several fireplace flues. Federal houses with end chimneys and hip roofs followed at Apponagansett, Padanaram and Tucker Road, and Greek Revival cottages became the most common form in the villages. About 18% of the town’s housing still predates 1940.

Two other layers sit alongside the villages. Around the turn of the 20th century, workers’ housing from New Bedford spilled over into Bliss Corner, mostly two-family Colonial Revival houses, while larger houses and summer estates went up along the coast at South Dartmouth, Nonquitt and Round Hill. Then came the big postwar growth: the Census Bureau dates 18.1% of today’s housing to the 1970s alone, with substantial shares from the 1950s, ’60s, ’80s and ’90s. Those houses mostly have a single brick chimney serving a fireplace and, often, the heating system.

Heating fuel stands out. An estimated 30.2% of Dartmouth homes heat with oil and 2.0% with wood, both well above New Bedford’s shares. Oil soot carries sulfur, and when it sits with moisture in a cool flue it can form acids that wear tile joints and mortar from the inside. A house that burns wood for heat puts far more fuel through its flue than a fireplace used on holidays, which changes how often it needs sweeping.