A single pot chimney stack can let gallons of water into your house each year. The rain soaks into the old mortar joints, porous bricks and the lining of the chimney, it usually runs down the inside of a chimney for 2 or 3 meters unless the flue is dead straight. If it is, you will already know when it rains as the fireplace will start rusting and getting wet.
It doesn’t look it from the ground but a chimney pot is usually 10″ in diameter, quite a hole to let rain enter your property. Back in the old days, when fires were burning almost every day this wasn’t a big issue but nowadays rain entry can lead to damp problems and chimney stack deterioration. You can check out our damp problem solving service here.
Eventually, like the example above, the brick joints will fail require, requiring a rebuild. This stack actually has additional problems that we frequently see; incorrect capping off using tiles. This creates condensation damp internally.
Commonly nobody looks at their chimneys, unless you are a sweep, until problems exist. The purpose of this blog is to say look to the sky and cast your eye over your chimney. If it is poorly capped, has stuff growing out of the stack, is leaning, has poor pointing or otherwise you are having damp issues then give us a call, looking to the sky once in a while could save a very expensive chimney rebuild further on down the line.