Family-owned chimney repair serving Pershing

Keeping the house safe until the repair

Some damage should change how you use the house before any repair starts. If the damage is in the flue, the firebox or the chamber above the damper, leave the fireplace unused until it has been repaired. Those are the parts that contain the fire and carry its smoke out of the house, so a fault there is not one to test with a fire.

Water coming in beside the chimney is the other reason to adjust. Move furniture, rugs and stored boxes away from a damp wall or attic spot, and catch drips before they soak further into a ceiling. Anything loose high on the chimney means keeping people clear of the ground below it.

Do not climb up to push bricks back, pull loose pieces down or smear sealant over a crack. At the free inspection, a flue that should stay cold and anything that could fall are the first items written up for your Pershing home, ahead of anything cosmetic.

• Leave a damaged fireplace cold
• Move belongings away from a damp wall
• Stay off the roof and the ladder

Worn mortar joints let water in

Mortar joints are often where water gets into a brick chimney. BIA maintenance guidance says moisture may penetrate brick masonry through unbonded, cracked or deteriorated joints, and it lists the conditions that call for repointing.

Light scraping with a metal tool and a close look show where mortar has gone soft. The same guidance calls repointing, sometimes known as tuckpointing, one of the most effective ways to reduce moisture penetration, and it advises repointing all the joints in the affected wall area, since it can be hard to tell which joints are letting water through.

Worn joints on homes in Pershing are routed to our chimney tuckpointing service. The estimate marks each wall area to be repointed.

• Mortar eroded back from the brick face
• Mortar that crumbles or has voids
• Hairline cracks in the mortar
• Cracks between the brick and the mortar

A chimney leaning or pulling away from the house

A gap opening between a chimney and the wall of the house, or a stack that no longer looks plumb, is a sign of movement. BIA maintenance guidance names out-of-plane movement of masonry as a structural condition, one that generally calls for a professional engineer to find the cause.

A bead of sealant or foam in the gap is not a repair. It hides the gap while whatever is moving the chimney carries on. The cause can sit at the footing, in the connection to the house or in the stack itself, and each one calls for a different fix.

Our crew in Pershing checks where the chimney has moved, at the base, at the roofline or both. The estimate names the movement as a structural concern, recommends an engineer's evaluation and leaves sealing or patch work off the list until the cause is known.

Where a stovepipe enters the chimney

When a stove or other appliance connects to a masonry chimney through a wall, the pipe enters the flue from the side through a thimble. Under the Florida Building Code, that thimble is fireclay, rigid refractory material or metal, and it keeps the connector from pulling out or reaching past the inside wall of the liner.

Trouble shows up at that joint. Mortar around the thimble cracks and falls out, the thimble works loose or the connector was pushed in so far that it blocks part of the flue. Soot or stains around the opening on the room side are a sign the seal has failed.

The fix depends on what failed. A loose thimble is reset in the masonry, a damaged one is replaced and a connector that goes too deep is cut back to the liner face. Homeowners in Pershing see the thimble, the connector and the flue behind them written as separate repairs.