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.