We have had chronic roof leaks around our chimney since we bought the house. The first summer we owned the house we replaced the shingled roof with metal, which corrected a number of roof related issues, but never quite fixed the leaks near the chimney, which continued to become more severe over time. Roofers who we had look at the situation said that the roof was done exactly like they would do it, but that the roof line was such a bad design it was not really permanently fixable.
The challenges:
The house as originally built was an A-frame, with the chimney on one side of the house. The chimney has 2 flues -- one for the main floor fireplace and another for what must have been a stove in the basement (now nonexistent) The chimney is massive in size!! It is 7 feet wide outside the house, and is tapered so it flares to 10 feet wide inside the house In the 90s an addition to the house (kitchen and upstairs bedroom pushed out) changed the roofline so snow and ice backs up behind the chimney The rock on the chimney is porous. Maybe if the chimney was sealed every year water would not have seeped behind the rock, but this was not the case.
While aesthetically the chimney looked pretty, after many years we decided you cannot put band aids on a bad design, and that the correct way to fix the problems was to correct the design. Plus we did not need the chimney, as we had a propane insert inside the fireplace.
*THE CHIMNEY MUST GO!
*The project needed to be scheduled to begin in spring/early summer, as we did not know what additional problems and issues we might uncover. We needed a few months safety margin. It does typically snow here in October, so it really needed to completed in advance of that. Last summer was spent trying to arrange the necessary contractors and schedule them in -- because of the short summer season they need to be booked far, far in advance.
And who the heck do you get to demolish a chimney anyway? It is definitely an out of the ordinary project. We finally ended up contacting masons, since these are people who know how to put chimneys up, and had an extremely pleasant experience with the mason who removed the chimney. Starting on June 8, /*he and jack hammer single handedly removed 35 tons of rock, cinder block and debris over a two week period!!!!*/ This was followed by a carpenter who was able to come in immediately (June 22-26) after demolition and re-framed the roof. In an incredible "just in the nick of time" job, the roofer came out on Friday, June 26 in the afternoon to apply the waterproofing tar paper to provide the initial seal to protect the new roof.
While extremely nervous about having all the pieces fall into place, we having nothing but praise for the contractors and our experience with them. We remain a ways from completion of this entire remodel, but the chimney removal and roof in place provides us a timeframe that is unaffected by weather. This is an extremely big milestone to have completed!! **
The original chimney. Massive!! Note the roof valley that ends directly behind the 10 foot chimney. We average 200 inches of snow a winter, which sat all winter behind the chimney melting and re-freezing. This is not a a stupid design; this is *really, really stupid design!*
The new clean roof line. The carpenter makes it look so easy! And photo with tar paper in place.
Tar paper was complete at approximately 7pm on June 26, just in time for some serious wet weather testing. Throughout the storms which at times produced extremely heavy monsoon rains, we remained dry inside the house. Finally, finally, finally no leaks!!
More photos to follow of the actual demolition.
