How central Ohio winters wear an east-side chimney down
The thing that quietly destroys a Reynoldsburg chimney is not a single hard freeze, it is the constant back and forth between freezing and thawing that a central Ohio winter delivers week after week. Masonry is porous, and a chimney that has soaked up rain or snowmelt holds that water in the brick and the mortar joints. When the temperature drops, the trapped water freezes and expands, prying the joint open a fraction of a millimeter. When it warms, the water seeps in deeper. Repeat that cycle a few dozen times across a winter, year after year, and you get spalling brick faces, crumbling mortar, and a crown that has cracked clean through. The east side sees this as much as anywhere in the metro, and on the older homes near the original village it is often well advanced before anyone notices.
The other half of the problem comes from the inside. Every wood fire deposits creosote on the walls of the flue, a tarry, flammable residue that builds up a little thicker with every cold evening spent in front of the fire. A flue that is never swept accumulates that fuel until a stray ember or an overfired stove can ignite it, and a chimney fire is exactly the kind of fast, hot event that the whole inspection-and-sweep routine is meant to prevent. Gas appliances are not off the hook either, because they vent acidic moisture that eats at clay tile and corrodes metal over time. Both kinds of buildup are invisible from the living room, which is the entire reason a yearly look matters here.