Chimney Leaks & Storm Damage in Sandy Springs, GA

Chimney Leaks & Storm Damage for Sandy Springs Homeowners

Sandy Springs is where our work shifts from masonry to metal. A great deal of the housing here went up between the 1960s and the 1990s, and much of it uses factory-built fireplaces venting through a framed chase with a metal chase cover on top, rather than a solid brick stack. Those systems fail differently: the chase cover rusts through and pours water into the chase where nobody can see it, the metal flue sections corrode at the joints, and the whole assembly has a service life rather than lasting indefinitely like brick. Homeowners who have only ever owned masonry chimneys are often surprised that a prefab needs replacing at all.

1960s-1990s housing with a high proportion of factory-built fireplaces in framed chases; rusted chase covers and corroded metal flue sections are the recurring faults.

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.