Olympia Chimney Chimney Cap Installation Nationwide

Olympia Chimney Chimney Cap Installation: The Towson Owner’s Guide

We stock and install Olympia Chimney-compatible chimney caps for Towson homes, with most replacements running $285-$495 installed depending on flue size and whether your crown needs sealing work. In our experience, about half the calls we get are from owners who’ve already bought the cap online and realized the flashing or mounting doesn’t match their Olympia Chimney flue tile profile. If you’re seeing rust streaks down the brick or hearing water drip in the firebox after a Towson thunderstorm, the cap is usually the first thing to check.

Call (443) 785-3816

Which Olympia Chimney Models This Applies To

Olympia Chimney caps aren’t one-size-fits-all, and the compatibility gotcha most Towson owners hit first is the difference between their round flue tile series and the older square-shoulder designs. The current Olympia Chimney line uses 8″, 10″, and 12″ round flue tiles with a 3/4″ wall thickness, but homes built in the 1970s and 80s around Towson often have the 13″ x 13″ or 13″ x 18″ square-shoulder flues that need a completely different mounting skirt.

Here’s how to tell what you’ve got: look down from the roof at the top course of flue tile protruding above your crown. If it’s round with a smooth outer wall, you’ve got the current series. If it’s square with a pronounced shoulder or lip, that’s the legacy profile. We carry both the OEM Olympia Chimney caps and the Gelco stainless equivalents on our trucks, and frankly, the Gelco units often outlast the factory caps in Maryland’s freeze-thaw cycle. The 304 stainless Gelco carries a lifetime warranty against rust-through, which matters in Towson’s coastal-influenced climate where salt air accelerates corrosion on cheaper galvanized caps.

We measure on site with a flue caliper because “13-inch” tile often measures 12 7/8″ or 13 1/4″ depending on the batch year, and a sloppy fit is how water gets in.

Signs Your Olympia Chimney Chimney Cap Installation Is Failing

• Rust-colored staining on the brickwork below the cap. The cap’s galvanized mesh or base ring has corroded through, and every rainstorm is depositing iron oxide down your chimney face. In Towson’s humid summers, this accelerates once it starts.
• Water in the firebox or damp odors days after rain. The cap’s lid has separated from its base, or the mesh sides have detached at the seam. Olympia Chimney caps use a crimped seam there, and the crimp loosens after about 12-15 years of thermal cycling.
• Debris, leaves, or bird nesting material visible in the flue. The mesh sides are missing, bent outward, or rusted away entirely. Squirrels can pull through gaps as small as 1″ once the mesh weakens.
• The cap is visibly tilted or shifted from center. The mounting brackets have corroded, or the original installer used generic screws instead of the stainless expanding bolts Olympia Chimney specifies. A tilted cap channels water directly into the flue instead of shedding it.
• Downdraft smoke or cold air entering the firebox when the damper is closed. The cap’s lid is too low or the wrong diameter for your flue, creating a pressure vacuum. This happens when a previous owner installed a “universal” cap that never matched the Olympia Chimney spec.

Replacement Cost & What’s Included

The price spread depends on three things: your flue size and shape, whether we need to fabricate a custom mounting skirt for an older Olympia Chimney profile, and the condition of the crown beneath the cap. We always photograph the crown before we quote and show you what we found. No surprises on the bill. Our 90-Day Done Right Promise covers the installation and the sealant work, in writing, no arguing. If water gets past our cap in that window, we come back.

DIY or Call Us?

There’s no high-tension danger here like a garage door spring, but there’s a reason most of our Towson cap calls start with “I watched the video and now I’m stuck.” What goes wrong: the roof pitch on Towson’s older colonials is steeper than it looks from the yard, the flue tile cracks when you over-torque a mounting bolt, or the cap fits loose and blows off in the first winter storm because the mounting skirt was never seated right.

What you can safely check from inside: shine a flashlight up the flue and note whether the cap’s mesh is intact and centered. What you should leave alone: anything involving a ladder, roof work, or drilling into flue tile that might be brittle from decades of freeze-thaw. We’ve replaced too many caps that were “installed” with sheet metal screws through the crown, which guarantees water intrusion and crown replacement later.

If you’ve already got the cap in your garage, call us at (443) 785-3816 and we’ll quote just the installation with our sealant package. We’ll be there when we say.

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