Family-owned chimney chase repair in Piedmont

What a chimney chase is built to do

A chimney chase is a framed box that wraps the factory-built chimney pipe on its way up and out of the house. It is built from studs and sheathing like any exterior wall, then finished with siding or stucco to match the home. From the yard it can pass for a masonry chimney, but no brick holds it up.

The chase has two jobs. It keeps weather off the metal chimney inside, and its framing is laid out to stay the distance from the pipe that the chimney maker lists. When water gets into the box, the wood can rot for a long time behind a finish that still looks fine.

Our technicians treat chimney chase repair in Piedmont as exterior wall work with a listed chimney in the middle of it. The written estimate names the wood, the finish and the water path separately, so you can see what each line fixes.

Changing the chase finish to suit the house

A chase repair is a chance to change the finish. Some homeowners swap rotted panel siding for fiber-cement lap, match the chase to a stucco house or trade vinyl for a painted finish. Each change brings its own barrier, flashing and fastening rules.

Going to stucco on a framed chase means the two-layer barrier, corrosion-resistant lath and three coats the code describes. Going to fiber-cement means protected joints and the maker's fastening. The framing underneath has to be flat and sound for either one. Moving from siding to stucco also adds weight and curing time, which the schedule has to allow for.

Our technicians price the like-for-like repair and the change side by side, so you can weigh them. For your Piedmont home, we also check whether a new finish changes how the cover or the roof flashing meets the chase, and we list any follow-on work.

What a full chase rebuild involves

A chimney chase rebuild follows a set order. The fireplace is taken out of use, the cover and chimney cap come off, and the siding and sheathing are stripped down to the framing. Rotted framing is replaced and the box is squared and braced around the chimney pipe.

Firestops, shields and supports inside the chase are checked and reset to the chimney maker's instructions along the way. For homes in Piedmont, the full sequence is laid out in the written estimate before work starts. The new chase goes together in this order.

• New framing laid out to keep the listed air space around the pipe
• New sheathing, barrier and flashing at the roof and house wall
• The chosen siding or stucco, trim and paint
• A new or reset cover at the top, priced as its own line

The air space around the chimney pipe

The chimney pipe inside a chase has a listed clearance to anything that can burn, and that clearance is an air space. One maker's instructions, DuraVent's for its DuraChimney II system for example, say the required clearance space is never to be filled with insulation or any other material.

Studs, sheathing and blocking in the chase are all combustible. When a chase is reframed, every new piece has to sit outside that clearance, and a corner that has been pushed inward by a lean or a sag has to be moved back out.

Our crew checks the air space on all sides whenever a chase in Piedmont is open. New framing is laid out around the pipe, never the other way around. The clearance figure comes from your system's own instructions, never from a rule of thumb.