Family-owned chimney repair serving Pineloch

Hairline cracks in a concrete crown

Fine cracks in a concrete crown do not always mean it was built badly. BIA guidance on chimney construction calls shrinkage of concrete as it cures a certainty, and it recommends reinforcement in a cast crown to help control cracking from shrinkage and from heating and cooling.

What matters is what the cracks let through. A few fine lines in a crown with a good slope and sound edges are a different case from cracks that cross the full width, reach the flue liner or have let water stain the brick underneath. The first is a small repair. The second can mean water is reaching the masonry, and the crown may need replacing rather than patching.

Width, length and pattern are all checked, along with the brick directly below. The estimate names one of the two options and sends the work to our chimney crown repair service, with the reasoning written beside it.

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.

What the free inspection covers

The free inspection is a top to bottom look at the chimney, not a quick glance at the one symptom you called about. It costs nothing, and nothing is booked or started until you have a written estimate in hand and say yes.

Our technicians first identify the construction, masonry or factory-built, because that decides which parts, code sections and maker's instructions apply. Then each symptom is traced back to the part causing it, rather than stopping at the first likely suspect.

The estimate names each finding, the repair and its price, so homeowners in Pineloch can decide what to do and when. The look takes in the parts below.

• Cap, crown and the top of the flue
• Flashing and the roof line around the chimney
• Brick, stone, stucco or siding and its joints
• Firebox, damper and smoke chamber from below

How a chimney is tied to the house

A chimney built against an outside wall is meant to be fastened to it. Brick Industry Association guidance says single-wythe chimneys should be attached to the structure, generally with corrosion-resistant metal ties.

Those ties sit out of sight. When they rust through or were never installed, the only signs may be a gap opening between chimney and siding, a crack running up the line where the two meet or trim pulling away. The same guidance has the layers of a chimney more than one wythe thick joined with metal wire ties where the masonry itself does not lock them together, so ties can matter inside the chimney as well as at the wall.

Where anchors or ties have failed, BIA maintenance guidance describes proprietary retrofit anchors set through small holes drilled in the masonry, usually in a mortar joint, and attached to the structure behind, with the anchor maker consulted on each product. It says such anchors improve the stability of the masonry. Our crew in Pineloch checks the joint between chimney and house during the inspection and writes any re-anchoring into the estimate.