If you’re like many homeowners, your chimney or fireplace can seem like a strong, permanent part of your home. However, just like any other part of your home, your masonry requires maintenance and occasional repairs to keep working efficiently, effectively, and safely. But how do you know if you need chimney or fireplace tuckpointing or masonry repairs for your New Braunfels home, and what kind of repairs can you expect? Here’s a quick look through some of the most common types of masonry repairs.
Does Your Chimney or Fireplace Need Tuckpointing or Other Masonry Repairs?
Standard Chimney and Fireplace Repairs
Cracking
When you have cracks in your masonry work, it provides an opening for moisture to enter your chimney’s interior, which can cause water damage to your home’s interior and additional masonry damage from freeze/thaw cycles. It can also allow fire, smoke, and carbon monoxide to leave your chimney system prematurely, leading to a possible house fire or deadly carbon monoxide poisoning. Cracks in the mortar between your bricks, rocks, or blocks can be repaired by repointing or tuckpointing, depending on the level of damage.
Crown or Chase Cover Fails
At the top of your chimney brick or rock work is a slightly wider area called the crown or chase cover. Made of metal or concrete in most cases, it protects the top of your stone or brickwork by keeping moisture flowing away from it. However, over time, the metal can rust or the concrete can wear. It can also crack due to a physical blow, such as a tree falling on it during a storm. If the crown fails, it allows moisture to penetrate your chimney, causing significant damage.
Chimney Liner Fails
It doesn’t matter if you have the original flue ties or a metal chimney liner inside your chimney, if it fails, it’s an important issue that you need to handle before you start another fire in your fireplace or wood stove. A failed chimney liner can allow excess creosote to build up, leading to a chimney or house fire, while a leaking chimney liner can allow deadly carbon monoxide and other fumes to leak into your home, endangering you and your loved ones.
Poor Design
Sometimes chimneys have bad design that cause them to operate poorly. This can impact smoke removal, drafting, and removal of fumes that can be dangerous to your health. In some cases, you could have issues with draft when a tall structure is put in next to your home or business, preventing it from drafting as it did in the past, requiring a change made to improve it. In other cases, installing a new appliance without sizing the chimney or liner to the appliance can cause issues.
Chimney Cap Fails
Though small animals are cute, you don’t want them in your home. Water, odd smells, debris, or animals in your home can be a sign that your chimney cap has failed. Acting as a little roof over your chimney’s opening, a chimney cap also has a screen around it. This screen keeps coals and embers from leaving your chimney system, preventing fires. However, it also keeps debris, water, and small animals out of your chimney, especially birds and rodents who think it’s a great place to make a home in the off season.
Water and Weather Penetration
When water is able to get into fine cracks around your brickwork, it can cause significant damage, especially in areas where freezing weather is a concern. As freezing and thawing takes place, more cracks and gaps open up. However, even without freeze cycles, you can still see significant damage to your home from moisture entering it. If the flashing on the side of your chimney fails, it allows rainwater to enter your home, leading to stains, mold, and other issues.
Failing Mortar
Though it looks hard and strong, the mortar between stones or bricks can age and fail, especially the mortar on the outside of your home. When this happens, the mortar begins to fail. If you don’t get repointing or tuckpointing for the chimney or fireplace in your New Braunfels home, it will continue to fail, which can lead to a chimney reconstruction. However, most homeowners will catch these issues before it gets this far and can have repairs done to fix the problem.
When you have a solid grasp of how your chimney, fireplace, and masonry age over the course of time, you can better watch for signs that it’s beginning to fail. As with so many things in life, catching these issues early makes a huge difference in the cost and effort involved to fix the problem.
If you’re concerned about your chimney, fireplace, or other masonry work and need to have someone take a look at it, the experienced professionals at Wolfman Chimney & Fireplace in New Braunfels offer chimney and fireplace tuckpointing as well as masonry repairs and are always ready to help. Contact us today to set up an appointment!
Reach us online, send us a text, or call us at 830-620-4335 today!