Chimney Flashing Repair in Overlook, Waterbury from $300. An estimated $300 to $1,800 – the commonest source of a leak on an older Waterbury house. Free inspection and a written quote.
On an Overlook slate roof, chimney flashing is woven into the slate courses, and a repair done with caulk and asphalt patches leaves black scars on gray stone. Step flashing is renewed slate by slate, so the roof around it is not disturbed.
A chimney leaks from one of four places: the step flashing up the sides, the apron at the front, the cricket or back pan behind, or the counter-flashing let into the mortar. On older stacks the mortar is usually the weak link. Once the joints erode the counter-flashing pulls loose, water runs down behind the metal, and caulk on the surface never reaches it.
Chimney flashing repair is estimated at $300 to $1,800 in most cases. It is the commonest single source of a recurring leak on a pitched roof, and Waterbury's pre-war houses have a great many old masonry stacks. Slate and clay tile change the arithmetic. They cannot be roofed over, so repair is priced first, and the gambrels and hipped Foursquares carry more valleys per square foot than a gable.
One failed detail on sound brickwork – counter-flashing pulled out of a joint, or an apron lifted at a corner.
Eroded mortar that has to be raked and repointed before new metal can bed into it, and a missing cricket on a wide stack.
Fresh caulk on weathered metal. New step flashing is bright against an old stack; reused flashing with a bead run round it looks tidy only from the street.
This is where Waterbury's slate survives: the district's National Register nomination records houses still carrying slate or clay tile. Gambrels and hipped Foursquares also mean more hips and valleys per square foot than a plain gable.
On a slate or tile roof here the first question is whether it can be repaired, because it cannot be roofed over.
All four details, and the mortar behind them.
Step flashing, apron, cricket and counter-flashing are each checked, because the visible one is rarely the only one failing.
Behind any chimney wider than 30 inches a cricket is built, so drifting snow and meltwater go around the stack instead of under the shingles.
Old flashing comes out rather than being caulked over, and new step and counter-flashing is woven into the roof.
Replacing a roof in Overlook starts with what is on it.
Repairs in Overlook are often on roofs that cannot be covered over, so they matter more than elsewhere.
An emergency on an Overlook slate roof needs care in the dark that a shingle roof does not: walking the field breaks more slate than the storm did.
Flat roofing in Overlook is mostly porch roofs and rear additions on otherwise pitched houses – and where the main roof is slate or tile, the junction between the two is the detail that leaks.
Overlook is the part of Waterbury whose National Register nomination records houses still carrying slate or clay tile.
In Overlook the inspection's first job is identifying the covering: slate, clay tile or asphalt, and if slate, whether the stone is sound or delaminating.
One city, one permit office. The 25% line decides it.
Brass-family Queen Annes. Many valleys, steep lots.
Trolley-era half-acre lots. Capes with rooms upstairs.
The 1674 ridge. Farmhouses and well-kept triple-deckers.
River to ridge. Triple-deckers and six-family blocks.
Rocky hills, Washington Hill and Hopeville. Access first.
Answered before anyone books a visit.
If it is wider than 30 inches across the slope, the code asks for one. A cricket sheds water and snow around the back of the stack; without it, drifting snow sits against the brickwork and the meltwater finds its way under the shingles.
Estimated at $300 to $1,800 in most cases. One failed detail on sound brickwork sits at the low end; eroded mortar to rake and repoint, or a cricket to build behind a wide stack, pushes it up.
We rake and repoint the joints the flashing depends on. Where the brickwork itself is failing we say so plainly, because new flashing on a spent chimney does not last.
Every quote states whether the job is a repair or a permitted replacement. The code lines named: ice barrier, deck-joint strip, layer count.