Honest chimney repair for Wedgewood Groves homeowners

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 Wedgewood Groves home, ahead of anything cosmetic.

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

Counterflashing set into the mortar joint

How the top edge of the counterflashing is held decides how long it stays tight. BIA guidance sets its edge 3/4 to 1 inch deep in a mortar joint, mortared in solid, so the metal is locked into the masonry itself.

One shortcut is a strip of metal fastened to the face of the brick with a bead of caulk along its top edge. A surface-mounted strip depends entirely on that bead. Once the caulk cracks or pulls away from the brick, water runs down behind the metal and into the very joint it was meant to protect.

Cutting the joint, setting the metal and mortaring it back in takes more time than a caulked strip. It is the detail we price on flashing jobs. The estimate says whether the counterflashing will be set into the joint and which joints are cut and remortared.

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.

Soft or swollen siding on a chase

Siding on a chase that feels spongy, bulges at a seam or sheds paint in patches is holding water. The wet area often sits lower than the leak, because water runs down behind the finish until something stops it.

Where siding, sheathing and framing sit close to the ground or to slabs exposed to the weather, the Florida Building Code asks for naturally durable or preservative-treated wood, which matters on a chase built up from grade. Higher up, the protection is the water-resistive barrier and flashing. Once those fail, untreated framing behind them is the part at risk of decay.

Our technicians probe the soft areas to find where sound wood starts, then remove damaged siding, sheathing and framing back to it. The source above is fixed in the same job so the new wood does not meet the same water. For your Wedgewood Groves home, the estimate shows how far the damage runs and what each layer costs to replace.