It’s discouraging when there are problems with the heating or cooling system. Recently I had troubles with the fireplace, a part of our furnace that we use quite frequently. We bought our home with a fireplace so we could use that to help our heating costs year after year. A fireplace is free to use as long as you do not include the cost of wood. We really get free wood from the forest behind the house, so it’s no big deal for us to use our fireplace. I heard some odd noises coming from inside of the chimney and it was getting close to the time when we would normally use our fireplace. I contacted someone at the heating supplier to have a full system repair performed on the chimney. There are skilled and trained professionals that climb up on the roof and clean the chimney from the inside out. This time when I had the repair performed, I found out that squirrels made a nest in the chimney while in the summer. I had no idea that there were squirrels inside of the chimney and I do not think we heard any noises at all while in the springtime or summer. The repair professional took some pictures of the problematic areas. We had all of the debris and problematic areas cleaned and detached and after that I had the repair professional clean and completely sanitize the inside of the chimney. We did not want to breathe any excrement from the squirrel so it was a nice idea to make sure that the chimney was well cleaned.