Rebuilding Your Chimney
When the Damage Is Too Severe
Chimneys need to be rebuilt for many reasons including ice and water damage, acid erosion, lightning strikes, and stress from movement caused by poor construction. Chimney fires also cause considerable damage from expansion that may cause a chimney to need rebuilding.
The first thing we do at Swift is determine the cause of the damage. By understanding the cause we can often correct the mistakes made in the original construction that caused the damage. It goes without saying, if we do a repair without knowing the cause, the repair may need to be redone in the future. We want you to be confident in the repairs we perform.
The most common correction we make, when reairing chimneys, is to free up the terra cotta flue tiles. These tiles need to move (expand) independantly of the crown. During high heat events like chimney fires the expansion can literally pick up many courses of brick! Imagine that a flue tile might expand 1/16 of an inch during normal usage. An average chimney has ten or more tiles. That would add up to nearly 3/4 of an inch. Now imagine how much more expansion and how much more force is exerted during a chimney fire!
After finding the cause of the damage, we determine how far down the chimney the repairs or rebuilding must go in order to be sure that the new masonry work is built on solid footing. Damage is often limited to a specific area. Once in a while a total rebuild is needed, but, we always make an effort to control the cost to you.
Whether it is a brick chimney, a stucco wall, or a basement wall, we always repair or rebuild damaged areas in a thorough manner with the materials best suited to the demands of the environment. We have become adept at blending the newly rebuilt areas with the surrounding masonry to minimize the visual impact of the repair.