Cincinnati Homeowners Rely On Us for Chimney Crown Repairs
The chimney crown is the concrete-like surface at the top of your chimney. Its job is to direct water away from the sides of the flue and to help prevent any moisture from entering your chimney. Unfortunately, cracks or missing pieces in the mortar crown can lead to extensive water damage throughout your system.
Does Your Chimney Crown Need Professional Care?
In many cases with damaged crowns, we discover that they were made from inappropriate materials to begin with. Back in the 70s, 80s, and 90s it was common to use a basic mortar or sand mix for the chimney crown. Unfortunately, these materials are simply not designed to withstand the things your crown has to face – like wind, rain, and bad weather – and are bound to break down pretty quickly.
Rather, crowns should be made from a concrete-like mixture that won’t disintegrate and fall apart.
So, how can you know if your crown is in need of professional care? One of the biggest things to watch for is cracking. If you spot a large crack or gap, it’s likely that water has already entered and that the freeze/thaw process has started breaking things down.
We Have Options for You
Here at American Chimney, we can fix your crown a couple of different ways. To begin, we’ll remove the entire crown and get it back to the brick. After this, we’ll install a membrane that we can pour the concrete over.
We can then do a splay, which is when the crown materials go to the end of the brick, or more of a drip-edge cap, which sticks out about 2 inches past the end of the brick. We’d be happy to discuss which options are best for your setup.
Don’t Put it Off – Call Us Today
The more water is exposed to your crown, the more repairs you’ll need, like brick replacement, tuckpointing, relining work, and more. This is an area where, if you don’t resolve the problems, they’ll only get worse – and the repairs will get more expensive.
An expert flashing repair is one of the common solutions for a leaky chimney repair issue. Ask us about it today.