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Tuck-pointing a chimney

This summer has been busy for us at Yamhill County chimney and on this day ( and the week following it) we were repairing another chimney that had substantial damage to its mortar joints, crown, and flashing. The chimney was also missing appropriate flue tiles ( extensions to the existing flue) and the liner inside the chimney had to be extended.

Chimney before repairs.

As you can see this repair cannot be done from a ladder due to the position of the chimney and thus we began the repair by constructing a scaffold and building a platform around the chimney, which would allow us to perform repairs on the backside of the chimney.

Scaffolding

Scaffold and planking

After the platform and scaffolding were constructed and secured we were able to begin the repairs. In this case, we began by repointing the mortar joints. We did this by removing the deteriorated mortar using a grinder and then replacing and tooling the new mortar using a tuck-point bag and jointer ( also called a striker). During the grinding process, we employ dust collection attachments which are connected to vacuums that collect the dust produced by this process.  This repair is done when the mortar has suffered some deterioration ( between 3/8 in and 1/2 in), the bricks are still in good condition, and there are no faults in the construction. If any of those had not applied in this case then a full chimney rebuild would have been necessary to repair the damage.

Ground-out joints

Newly finished Mortar joints.

After successfully repointing the chimney we removed the remaining pieces of the previous crown, which had lost there bond to the structure and needed to be replaced. Following this we poured a new crown and added tiles to the structure in order to improve the draft of the structure and provide a place to re-seat the existing liner cap, and install a rain cap.

New crown, raincap ( on the back flue), and liner cap ( on the front flue).

During the last phase of this repair we removed the old flashing around the chimney and replaced it with new flashing. This was done because the old flashing has significant rust damage, which compromised its ability to repel water from the house.

An example of Flashing at the base of another chimney