Various Class-A Chimney Brands
(Number of stars (**) indicates our attitude toward that brand.)
Metl-Vent
This brand has been around a long time. For many years, it was
the only brand we carried, because the quality is very high and
consistent. The sections of chimney are physically heavier than
any other brand we know of.
The manufacturer chose to focus more completely on making registers
and grilles (their main business) about 1985. After that time,
the quality still stayed high, but we sometimes experienced very
long delays in receiving orders (sometimes 3-4 months).
Nice people, great products, almost competitive prices (with our
discount), but sometimes very long delays.
Their chimney's wall thickness is 1".
****
Metal-Bestos SSII
This company supplies more factory built chimney products than
any other. 6" and 8" are immediately available; 10" usually
within a week or two.
Good products, competitive pricing.
They also make Selkirk Sentinel Class A Chimney materials,
primarily for the Canadian market.
Their SSII chimney has a wall thickness of 1". The Sentinel
line has a wall thickness of 2.25".
***
DuraVent
This company makes an enormous amount of chimney materials. In
most sizes, they offer a choice of outside wall material.
(Inside is always Stainless Steel) The Galvanized outside is a
little less expensive but may eventually deteriorate. The
Stainless outside is more expensive, but all stainless and so
should last a very long time. (The other brands of insulated
chimneys only offer a Stainless outside variety.)
Good products, competitive pricing.
Their chimney wall thickness is about 1.5".
***
GSW
SuperChimney Twenty-One
A big company which makes a lot of chimney, so 6" and 8" are
immediately available.
Good products, competitive pricing.
Their Chimney Twenty-One has a wall thickness of 1". Their
Chimney 2100 (primarily for the Canadian market) has a wall
thickness of 2".
***
Amerivent
This it the only remaining company which still makes the so-called
triple-wall air-cooled chimney. In the 70s and early 80s,
triple-wall was very popular, and lots of companies then
manufactured it, but the double-walled insulated
chimney has become much more popular in recent years. The triple
wall pipe has much larger outside diameter and also requires
cold outside air to continuously pass between the walls, which
can irregularly "chill" the inside wall, thereby affecting the
fire's draft.
We used to handle a lot of this. In the past 10 years, very little.
Their chimney wall thickness is about 3".
*
Security
This Canadian company makes good products and has been making
efforts at getting a larger market share in the U.S. market.
Good products, competitive pricing.
Their ASHT line (or the Projet HT 6103) has a wall thickness of 1".
Their S2100 (Projet HT 6000) line has a 2" thick wall.
***
Ryder
This Canadian company had great prices but they were not really
set up to sell across the border in the U.S.
We never saw or sold any of their products.
Our understanding is that they went bankrupt.
-
Metal Fab
We do NOT suggest this brand!
Occasionally, customers have specified this brand for us to
supply to them. We think that this brand's products are
extremely lightly made (flimsy) and seem inferior. In our opinoin,
the metal does not seem much thicker than a beer can, and that used
to be the basis of nicknames that some of our employees used to use
to describe their products. The thin metal seemed to often arrive
from shipment with various sized dents in it. Unless you
REALLY want this brand, we really would rather NOT supply it.
This brand has air spaces, and so thicker walls, so its outside
diameter is larger than most of the other brands.
-
This page is an accessory page for our Chimney Comparison Pricer
interactive page. That page will calculate your total cost of
all the pipe and all the (standard) accessory parts for YOUR
installation for each brand, and even apply the discount that
we can give you. You can then see your unique bottom line cost
for every brand and choice. Since each of these Class-A Chimney
brands has had to pass the same UL safety testing, you'll probably
then choose the least expensive overall! Comparison shopping at
its best!
That page is at: http://mb-soft.com/juca/info/chim1.html
The JUCA Home Page is at:
http://mb-soft.com/juca/index.html