Chimney Leaks & Storm Damage in Decatur, GA

Chimney Leaks & Storm Damage for Decatur Homeowners

Decatur has one of the highest rates of genuinely used fireplaces we see anywhere in the metro. The housing around Oakhurst, Winnona Park and the MAK district is largely 1920s to 1940s brick and frame, owned by people who renovate rather than replace, and who light real wood fires rather than treating the hearth as decoration. That is good for us and good for the houses, but it means creosote accumulates on a schedule here that it does not in neighbourhoods where the fireplace gets used twice a year. Decatur is also dense with mature hardwood, and the leaf load into an uncapped flue every autumn is genuinely remarkable.

1920s-1940s brick and frame with heavily used original fireplaces, mature hardwood canopy driving leaf and nesting debris into uncapped flues.

A chimney is the only part of a roof that is deliberately full of holes, and in a climate that delivers as much rain as Atlanta does, the odds catch up with it. Water gets in at four places: a cracked crown, failed flashing where the stack passes through the roof, a missing or damaged cap, and brickwork that has become porous enough to drink. The difficulty is that the stain inside the house rarely appears under the actual entry point — water tracks down the outside of the flue and shows up a storey below. Sealing where the stain is achieves nothing, which is why people end up paying for the same leak three times.