Chimney repair for homes in Lake Eola Heights
Tell us what the chimney is doing in Lake Eola Heights, and our crew will find out why at no charge.
- Licensed & insured
- Locally run
- Family owned and operated
- Same-day service available
Chimney repair items we put in writing in Lake Eola Heights
- Chimney construction confirmed, masonry or factory-built
- Bond break where the flue liner meets the crown
- Step flashing along the chimney sides
- Stains and white deposits, cleaned after the water fix
Repairs that fit the way your chimney is built
Overhang and drip edge keep water off the faces
Rain leaving a chimney top has to fall clear of the brick, or it runs down the faces and soaks in. BIA guidance shows the cap overhanging the faces. Where a cap does not overhang, it calls for the last two courses of brick to be corbeled out to form a drip, to help reduce the water running down the face.
A drip edge is also required by the Florida Building Code on the cap of a masonry chimney. The drip is simply the edge that water falls from, set out beyond the brick so the water drops free instead of creeping back to the masonry.
You can often read a missing drip from the ground. Streaks, dark wet patches or white deposits that start just under the top and spread down the faces can point to water leaving the top the wrong way. A flush top with those marks gets its own estimate line for a cap that overhangs.
A coating is not a new crown
BIA guidance on coatings for brick is blunt about what a clear repellent or a brush-on coating can do. Water usually gets into masonry at cracks and separations, and a repellent cannot stop water getting in through ineffective caps or copings or through mortar joints that were never filled.
A coat spread over a broken crown also hides it. The cracks stop showing from the ground while water keeps finding them. The same guidance says a repellent is not recommended in place of common repairs such as repointing or replacing spalled and cracked brick.
When a crown is cracked, broken or has lost its slope, the estimate prices a crown repair or a new crown, not a coating. Any water repellent on the masonry below is a separate question for after the repairs, written as an optional line rather than as the fix for the top.
Step flashing on a shingle roof
On an asphalt shingle roof, the sides of a chimney are flashed with the roofing. The Florida Building Code allows flashing against a vertical sidewall by the step-flashing method or with continuous L flashing, and it sends chimney flashing on a shingle roof to the shingle manufacturer's instructions.
Step flashing is a run of short bent pieces, each tucked in with a course of shingles and turned up the chimney, so every piece sheds water onto the shingle below it. Continuous L flashing is one long angle along the side instead. Where the code spells out an L flashing method, it starts the flashing at the lower part of the roof so every metal lap sheds water.
The shingle maker's instructions control the details, and our crew follows the ones for the shingle on your roof. Your estimate spells out the method, the metal and how the counterflashing will lap over it.
A chimney nobody has used for years
A fireplace that has sat unused for years is not safe just because nothing has happened. An open flue with no cap collects nests, leaves and debris. Dampers rust in place. Crowns and flashing keep aging whether anyone lights a fire or not.
The U.S. Fire Administration advises having chimneys cleaned and inspected each year by a professional, and a long gap means several of those checks were skipped. The first fire in an idle chimney should come after a full look, because a blocked flue has nowhere to send the smoke but back down.
Before that first fire, our crew in Lake Eola Heights checks the whole system, from the cap and crown down to the damper and firebox, and clears out what has collected. Anything that needs repair is written on the estimate before the fireplace goes back into service.
Other work in Lake Eola Heights
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Questions to ask before a chimney repair
Do you find the cause before recommending a repair?
Yes. We follow the symptom to the part that failed, since a ceiling stain or loose debris can start well above where it shows. The written estimate names that part and its repair instead of a general fix for the whole chimney.
What happens when the chimney has several problems at once?
We list each problem on one written estimate and put them in order, safety items first, then anything letting water in, then finish work. You can approve everything together or plan it in phases. Items that have to be done together are marked that way.
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