Safeside’s Professional Chimney Rebuilds
When a chimney is in poor condition and deteriorated beyond a repair, rebuilding is the next step. Sometimes rebuilding is actually cheaper than trying to fix various areas of an existing chimney. Fixing crowns, flashing, shoulders, tiles and mortar as separate projects is not always the best route to take. Tearing the chimney down to where it is solid and building it back up with new materials often can be the best value.
Why choose Safeside Chimney?
Not every chimney sweep is an actual mason. And not every mason, is comfortable building chimneys on pitched roofs. Safeside, for the last 25 years, have always had master masons on staff ready to do any serious rebuilding project. There are cases where an estimator gives an estimate for what they are capable of doing, not what the chimney needs. If the brick is spalled or broken, chimney is leaning, bricks are actually loose, interior top tiles deteriorated, then a spot repair from a chimney sweep is not going to get it done. You need a mason to rebuild the chimney. This is easy stuff for us, as every lead mason in our company has well over a decade experience, up to 30 years experience. We know our stuff.
Common reasons chimneys require rebuilding
Water! The universal solvent. Water will win over time. Combine that with the northeasts weather and temperature patterns and you have a recipe for chimney disaster. In Connecticut there are countless freeze/thaw cycles each year that wreak havoc on masonry structures. As the water penetrates the porous masonry, it expands and contracts with the varying temperature changes, breaking apart the masonry bonds. This will lead to possible brick spalling (faces or corners popping off ) cracks, separation, lifting and actual holes and a compromised chimney structure.
Other situations such as chimney fires, lightning damage, felled trees, sinking foundations have also been known to cause catastrophic chimney damage, requiring rebuilding. This type of sudden and unexpected event damage is often covered under homeowners insurance. Unfortunately, your policy won’t cover the standard wear and tear, which we commonly see in chimneys 30 + years old.
Whats involved with rebuilding a chimney
Chimney damage often happens top down, water gets in, freezes/expands and breaks apart masonry, row by row. We typically are removing the top all the way down to wear it is solid, and then building back up. Sometimes that is a few course partial rebuild, sometimes its a roof or flashing up rebuild, and sometimes its a down to the ground (side chimneys) complete removal and replacement. Though not as common, our master masons can rebuild entire fireboxes, hearths and smoke chambers when necessary.
We typically send a 2 – 3 man crew and we start by setting up appropriate staging or scaffolding around the chimney. We are often bucketing down the old chimney and ladder pullying up the new material for the mason to build. Each job has different plans of attack, but ultimately its the same process. Out with the old, in with the new. Cleanup is the key part of the job and a key emphasis in our work. After all, many homeowners don’t quite know the hoops we jump though to get a difficult job done, but can sure tell if there are large chunks of masonry in the lawn. It is our intent to return the property to its original condition prior to the project.
Safeside chimney can handle any project, large or small. We provide free estimates and determine the best course of action based on your chimney situation. The chimney will tell us what it needs.
Call us today ! 1-800-707-9337
We’ve been building chimney for over 25 years – since the days of polaroids
