What a central Ohio year does to the masonry above your roof
A Hilliard chimney absorbs punishment that has little to do with how many fires you light. The brick and crown sit fully exposed to the entire arc of a Franklin County year, the muggy heat of a Midwestern July, the soaking storms that roll across central Ohio in spring, and then the long, repeated freeze and thaw of a winter that rarely settles into one steady temperature. Masonry is porous by nature, so it pulls moisture in during every wet stretch, and the moment that trapped water freezes it swells and forces the brick and mortar apart from within. Each cold snap widens those openings a little more, and the crown at the very top, the most weather-beaten surface on the whole structure, is almost always the first piece to surrender.
The burning season layers on a second and entirely different form of wear. Every wood fire leaves creosote on the inner walls of the flue, a sticky, combustible deposit that thickens in layers and shrinks the channel the smoke is supposed to travel through. A flue even partway coated with hardened creosote is at once a fire risk and a draft problem, since the same residue that can ignite also strangles the airflow the fire relies on. The two forces grind away at opposite ends of the chimney at the same moment, water and ice chewing the structure from the crown down while creosote stacks up in the flue from the firebox up, which is precisely why a chimney here deserves a look on a schedule rather than only after something has plainly gone wrong.