Your local chimney repair team in Alafaya

A cricket behind a wide chimney

A wide chimney on a sloped roof acts like a dam. Water and debris coming down the roof collect against its uphill side, and the flashing there has to hold back what piles up. A cricket, also called a saddle, is a small peaked section of roof built behind the chimney to split that flow and send it around.

The Florida Building Code requires a cricket where the chimney is wider than thirty inches along the ridge direction and does not meet the ridge. Where the cricket joins the chimney, it is flashed and counterflashed the same way as the rest of the roof and chimney joint.

A leak on the uphill side of a wide chimney with no cricket can trace to that missing detail. When a cricket is missing or its flashing has failed, the work goes through our chimney flashing repair service together with the roofing it touches. For homeowners in Alafaya, the estimate says whether your chimney needs one.

Tile, metal and shingle roofs need different flashing details

Flashing has the same job on every roof. The Florida Building Code says flashing seals the roofing where it is interrupted and keeps moisture from entering the wall and roof at penetrations such as a chimney. How that job is done depends on what the roof is covered with.

The code has separate sections for asphalt shingles, clay and concrete tile and metal roofing, and each points to its own installation rules and manufacturer's instructions. A shingle roof takes step or L flashing worked into the courses. Tile and metal have profiles of their own, and a detail borrowed from a shingle job may not seal them.

Because the flashing ties into the roofing, some jobs need the roofer who installed or looks after that roof. The roof covering is identified before any flashing is priced, and the estimate spells out which work is ours and where a roofer has to be involved.

Weep holes and through-flashing at the base of veneer

At the bottom of a brick or stone veneer chimney there should be flashing under the first course, with small openings called weep holes just above it. Together they give water that gets behind the veneer a way out. The Florida Building Code requires both where masonry veneers a frame chimney.

Weeps are easy to spoil by accident. They get filled with caulk by someone who takes them for gaps, painted over or clogged from inside by mortar droppings. Brick Industry Association guidance treats flashing and weeps as essential details that no coating replaces, and it describes clearing clogged weeps with a thin dowel or stiff wire without damaging the flashing behind them.

Any water complaint on a veneer chimney includes a look at its base for the points below. Reopening blocked weeps, or adding them where they were left out, is priced as a separate line from the repair higher up.

• A row of open weeps just above the base flashing
• Flashing visible at the bottom course
• No caulk, paint or mortar plugging the openings

A written estimate that names each repair

A line that says chimney repair with one price under it tells you very little. A useful estimate breaks the job into components, the crown, the flashing, a section of brickwork, the damper, so you can see what each part needs and what it costs.

Each line on ours names the part, the problem found and the repair, with its own price. That makes it easy to compare with another contractor's figures, to phase the work or to approve only the urgent items first. Pricing is upfront, with no hidden fees added once the job starts.

Items you could put off are easy to spot, because nothing is bundled into a single total. The estimate is free, it is in writing before any work, and nothing starts until you approve it. For homeowners in Alafaya, the lines you approve are the scope of the job.