Chimney Sweep in Palos Heights, IL

Most of the time it's a repair. The honest answer depends on how far down the damage goes. On the two-story colonials and split-levels around here, the top few feet of a tall stack take most of the freeze-thaw punishment, because that's the exposed brick that stays wet and then freezes. If the face is flaking only in that upper section and the brick below is sound, a rebuild of the top courses plus a new crown usually solves it. What pushes a chimney toward a full rebuild is when the mortar has gone soft well down the stack, or when a flue liner inside has cracked along with it. We look at the crown, the counter-flashing where the stack meets a steep roof, and the condition of the mortar at several heights before telling you which one you're looking at. We'd rather tell you a partial rebuild will hold than sell you a tear-down.

Water, almost always from the top down. The homes here have more full masonry chimneys than anywhere else we work, and a lot of those stacks are tall, on steep two-story roofs, with a lot of brick facing the weather. Cracked crowns and lifted or rusted counter-flashing let water into the masonry, and after enough winters you get spalled brick, stained ceilings near the chase, or a damper that won't move. The second thing we see is an unused flue. Plenty of these houses have a second fireplace in a lower-level family room or the master suite that hasn't burned in years, and that flue still needs a cap and still collects moisture and animals. On the 1990s and 2000s custom homes, it's different: zero-clearance prefabs and direct-vent gas units mostly fail at the termination cap, the gaskets, or a blocked vent run, not at the brick.