Chimney Leaks & Storm Damage in Dunwoody, GA

Chimney Leaks & Storm Damage for Dunwoody Homeowners

Dunwoody's housing is dominated by two-storey building from the 1970s and 1980s, and the height changes the physics. A tall flue in a well-sealed house frequently has a draft problem rather than a dirt problem: the chimney is competing with kitchen and bathroom extraction in a house tight enough that air cannot easily replace what is being drawn out, and the fireplace loses. Homeowners read that as a dirty chimney and book a sweep, which sometimes helps and sometimes does not touch the real cause. We would rather diagnose it properly than clean a flue that was not the problem.

Tall two-storey 1970s-1980s flues in relatively tight houses; negative pressure and draft competition are as common as creosote.

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.