Masonry Repair on Exposed Goshen Chimneys

Why exposure does the damage, not age alone

Masonry fails through water, and water needs two things to break brick: a way in, and a temperature that swings across freezing while it is in there. A chimney out here gets both in quantity. Wind-driven rain and snow hit the windward face directly rather than glancing off, so the mortar joints on one side of the stack take a beating the other three never see. Then the sky clears overnight, as it tends to on the valley floor away from town, and the temperature drops far further than it would in a built-up neighborhood where roofs and pavement hold the day's heat. That deeper nightly swing is what turns a damp joint into a spalled brick face.

You can usually read it off the chimney. If the south and east faces look sound and the west side is sandy, receding and dropping crumbs into the gutter, that is not old age. That is prevailing weather, and repointing only the failed elevation is often the whole job.

What we repair, and the order it matters in

The crown is first every time. It is the concrete or mortar wash at the very top that sheds water off the brickwork, and a hairline crack in it feeds the entire stack. Rebuilding a crown properly means an overhang with a drip edge, an expansion joint around the flue tile, and something that will flex instead of splitting again next spring.

After that, tuckpointing failed joints, replacing individual spalled brick, resetting a leaning stack, rebuilding above the roofline where the damage stops at a definable point, and repairing or replacing flue tile that has cracked. On an old farmhouse we try to match soft lime mortar with something compatible rather than jamming hard modern cement between soft historic brick, because the hard stuff wins and the brick faces pop off.

When a rebuild is honestly the cheaper answer

If the top four or five courses are moving, patching them buys a couple of seasons at best. We will tell you when we think you are throwing money at something that needs taking down and relaying, and we would rather lose the small job than sell you it twice.