Chim-Chimney

On Saturday, Ian's Dad came over first thing in the morning, with his tall ladder (taller than ours that isn't quite high enough to get on the roof apparently), to take a look at our chimney with Ian. They had been up there in the fall, after a big rainstorm when we discovered water dripping into our garage from around the chimney somewhere. Luckily, there didn't appear to be any water coming inside the house itself! So they had gone up on the roof to see if they could spot the problem. They say that the chimney looked pretty good, and that's what the house inspector had said before we bought the house, too. In fact, he took pictures, and it looked fine. Ian says that there was some caulking in the concrete on the top of the chimney, but it looked to be in okay shape, and someone had spread a thin layer of concrete over it, I guess. So Ian and his dad thought that maybe if they put a cap on top of the chimney (which it should have anyways), it would stop the leak. They thought maybe water was going into the chimney, and seeping through the brick or something. (I really don't know anything about chimneys, and I am terrified of heights, so I will probably never know anything about chimenys, except what they tell me.) It seems we only get water dripping into the garage in particulary big rain storms, whether it has to do with the actual volume of rain, the speed in which it comes down, or the wind, we don't really know.

So Ian bought a cap for the chimney back in the fall, but never quite got around to putting it up before the snow arrived. And when there's snow, that's never a "good" time to get up on the roof if you don't have to.

Finally, now that the snow's all gone, the weather's warmed up, and we've been expecting some more good spring rain storms, Ian and his Dad got around to going back up there. However, as with just about every house project I've ever heard about, when they got up there, they discovered that the problem was worse than they thought. Over the winter the thin layer of concrete skimmed over the top had apparently deteriorated and crumbled. So they decided to re-concrete the top of the chimney AND put the cap on.

First, they had to remove all the old concrete. (Kindly, they've provided me with pictures! I told you, I am not going on the roof.)

And once it was all cleaned off (about three hours after Ian's Dad had arrived, and after a trip to Home Depot), they got around to mixing and laying (is that the word you would use?) the concrete.

And then they put the cap on, complete with wire mesh to keep the critters out. 

Didn't they do a good job?

And did you notice how nearly flat our roof is? It's not actually a flat roof, but a low slope roof, too low for shingles. And here's a view over the neighbours house, courtesy of Ian. I think he was trying to show me what it looked like up there, because I'll never see it. Notice the beautiful blue sky, too?

And here's our back yard, from the roof. Those are our Linden trees, which are slowly starting to bud! Good size yard huh?

A HUGE thank you to both Ian and his Dad for a job well-done, and for providing me with some great pictures to tell the story!

So far the rain has been delayed a whole day, (it was supposed to start yesterday) and now the thunderstorms that were forecast for today have turned into rain showers, but I'm sure, eventually, rain will come and I'll run out to the garage to check the bucket that we were using to catch the water dripping, and we'll know if they were successful in solving the problem! I have my fingers crossed!