Chimney Repairs · Croydon & the CR postcodes
Chimney Repairs In Croydon
Is the damp in your bedroom coming from the stack?
Repointing, flaunching, flashings, rebuilds and removals on Croydon chimneys
A chimney is the most exposed masonry on your house. It stands proud of the roof on all four sides, it has no roof of its own beyond a thin bed of mortar at the top, and it is full of holes by design. When damp appears in an upstairs room near a chimney breast, the stack is the first thing to look at and the last thing most people think of.
Free chimney repairs quote
Four details and somebody will come and look at it. There is no charge for the visit, no obligation afterwards, and if the answer is that your roof is fine, that is what you will be told.
1,000+
Roofs put right
10 year
Written workmanship guarantee
£0
To have somebody come and look
Repair first
Replacement is the last resort
What you are seeing, and what it usually means
None of this replaces somebody actually looking at your roof, but it will tell you roughly what you are dealing with and how much of a hurry to be in.
Damp patch on a chimney breast in an upstairs room
Water entering the stack and travelling down inside it. Usually failed flaunching at the top or open joints in the pointing, not the flashing where it meets the roof.
White powdery deposit on the brickwork
Salts being carried out of the brick by water passing through it. The stack is saturated and has been for some time.
Mortar visibly missing between bricks
Frost has done it. The exposed south of the borough gets around 35 nights of air frost a year, and every one of them works on wet mortar.
Dark staining spreading from where the stack meets the roof
The flashing. Often a previous repair where mortar or mastic was used in place of properly dressed and wedged lead.
Why use us for chimney repairs in Croydon
Repair is the default position
A stack that looks alarming from the ground is frequently sound below the top metre. We work out how far down the damage actually goes before recommending anything drastic.
Lead, not mortar
Flashings get done in code 4 lead, dressed and wedged into the joint. Mortar fillets crack within a couple of winters and they are the commonest bad repair we find on Croydon stacks.
Mortar matched to the brick
Victorian London stock brick is soft and wants a lime-rich mix. Pointing it in hard modern cement traps water in the brick and spalls the faces off it.
The top gets dealt with
Flaunching - the mortar bed the pots sit in - is where most stacks let water in. It is also the bit nobody photographs and nobody quotes for.
Removal done properly
If a stack is redundant and coming down, that means capping the flue, making the roof good with matched covering and dealing with the breast inside, not just knocking the top off.
Ten year guarantee
Written and handed over, covering the work carried out on the stack.
Two very different sorts of chimney in one borough
In the north of Croydon the stacks are Victorian and Edwardian: tall, slim, London stock brick, often shared with next door and often carrying four or more pots. They are soft, they have usually been pointed at least once in hard cement by somebody who did not know better, and the party stacks come with the complication that half of the thing belongs to your neighbour. Up the hill in Sanderstead, Selsdon, Purley and Coulsdon the stacks are interwar: squatter, in harder brick, less decorative, and generally in better condition, but sitting on more exposed roofs and taking more frost. The two need different mortar and a different order of work.
"Full rebuilds are the minority. Most of the stacks we are asked to condemn can be repointed and reflashed for a fraction of the money."
Based on the chimney repairs jobs handled by Roof Repairs Croydon
How a chimney repairs job runs
You describe the symptom
Which room, which wall, and does it only happen when the rain comes from a particular direction? That last question narrows things down more than people expect, before anybody has been anywhere near the roof.
Somebody comes and looks - loft included
Free, with no expectation that it becomes a job. Half the evidence is on the underside of the roof, so the loft gets looked at as a matter of course rather than as a favour.
You are told the cause before the price
In plain terms, with photographs where they make the point better than words. If you want to take that diagnosis to somebody else for a second quote, that is entirely reasonable.
A written, itemised price
Access priced as its own line, so it is obvious what you are paying to reach the work as opposed to doing it. The figure on the quote is the figure on the invoice.
The work, back to something solid
Failed material comes out until there is sound timber and sound masonry underneath. Matched covering, code 4 lead at the junctions, mortar mixed to suit the brick it is going onto.
Checked, cleared and guaranteed
The details either side get checked while the access is still up, the site is cleared, finished photographs come to you, and the written guarantee is handed over the same day.
The 10 year guarantee, and why it is safe to offer
Promising a roof will stay dry is easy. What counts is what happens if it does not. Work booked through Roof Repairs Croydon carries a 10 year workmanship guarantee, on paper, handed to you on the day and written in language you can actually read. The slates, tiles, lead, mortar, membranes and rainwater goods carry their own manufacturer cover on top of that. It varies by product, so you get told which cover applies to your job rather than one headline number that would be wrong on most of them.
Here is the reason a guarantee like that is not a risk. Repairs come back for one reason above all others: the fault was never found in the first place. Somebody went up, saw a stain on the ceiling below, mended whatever looked worst directly above it, and left. Water does not cooperate with that approach. It lands on a slate, runs under it, drops onto a rafter and travels along the rafter before it finds anywhere to fall. On a wide hipped roof in Sanderstead or Shirley that can be five metres from where it came in.
Find the entry point and the repair holds for years. Miss it and no amount of guarantee wording helps anybody. That is why the survey happens before the price, and it is why, if the same water finds its way back into your house inside the guarantee period, putting it right costs you nothing.
10 year
Workmanship guarantee
1,000+
Roofs put right
Covered
Public liability insurance
Per product
Maker's own warranty
Three questions worth asking whoever you use
Including us. If the answers do not stand up, that tells you something useful.
Are they quoting to rebuild without going up?
You cannot tell a stack's condition from the pavement. Bricks that look ruined through binoculars are often only surface-spalled. Insist somebody has actually been up and seen it before a rebuild is priced.
What mortar are they proposing?
On a Victorian stack the answer should involve lime. If the quote says cement and nothing else, the brick faces will start coming off within a few winters and you will have paid for the privilege.
Is the flaunching in the price?
It is the mortar bed the pots sit in, at the very top, and it is the single most common entry point. It is also easy to leave out of a quote and expensive to come back for once the scaffold has gone.
Repoint, Rebuild Or Remove?
Three genuinely different jobs, and the right one depends on how far the damage goes.
| Comparison point | Repoint and reflash | Rebuild the stack |
|---|---|---|
| When it applies | Brickwork sound, joints open, flaunching cracked, flashing tired. | Bricks spalled through rather than on the surface, or the stack leaning or moving. |
| How much comes down | Nothing. Joints are raked out and refilled, pots rebedded, new lead dressed in. | Down to a sound course, often below roof level, then rebuilt in matching brick. |
| Cost | The lower of the two by a wide margin, with access usually the biggest single line. | Several times a repoint, and scaffold is unavoidable. |
| Time | A day or two on most stacks. | Several days, plus curing time before the flashings go back. |
| Party stacks | Straightforward. Repointing your half affects nobody else. | Needs a conversation with your neighbour, and normally a Party Wall notice. |
| Lifespan afterwards | Decades, provided the mortar suits the brick. | Effectively a new stack. |
Taking a chimney out altogether
Plenty of Croydon stacks now serve nothing at all. Removing one is a reasonable decision and it takes a permanent maintenance liability off your roof, but it needs doing thoroughly. Any remaining flue has to be capped and ventilated so the breast does not sweat, the roof has to be closed up in covering that matches what is already there, and if the breast is coming out inside the house then whatever the stack was helping to support has to be dealt with first. On a party stack you can only remove your own half, which is a structural conversation rather than a roofing one.
See what a repair costs
What chimney repairs costs in Croydon
Repointing a stack and renewing the flashings is typically a four figure job once access is included, and access is usually the largest part of it. A full rebuild costs several times that. Reflaunching and rebedding pots on their own is cheaper again. If scaffold is going up for other work, doing the chimney at the same time saves a meaningful amount, which is worth thinking about if the stack is borderline.
See the full cost guideChimney Repairs - your questions
Do I need to do anything if the chimney is not used?
Yes. An unused stack still gets rained on and still lets water into the house. If anything it does worse, because there is no warm flue drying it out from the inside. Redundant stacks are among the wettest we see. Either maintain it or take it down, but leaving it alone is the option that causes damage.
The stack is shared with next door. What can I do to it?
You can repair and repoint your own side without agreement. Anything structural - taking it down, rebuilding it, cutting into it - engages the Party Wall etc. Act 1996 and needs notice served on your neighbour. It is not usually a problem, but it does need doing before work starts rather than after somebody complains.
Why has my chimney been repointed and still leaks?
Two usual reasons. Either the flaunching at the top was not renewed, so water is still going in above the pointing, or the pointing was done in hard cement on soft brick, which drives water into the brick instead of letting it evaporate out of the joint. Both are common and both are fixable.
Is a leaning chimney dangerous?
It can be, and it is worth getting looked at rather than watched. Some lean is old and stable, caused by sulphate attack from years of burning coal, and has not moved in decades. Some is active. Photographs against a straight edge and a look at the mortar joints will usually tell you which, and that assessment is free.
Do you fit chimney cowls?
Yes. A capping cowl on a disused flue keeps rain out while letting the flue breathe, which is what stops the breast going damp. On a working flue the cowl needs to suit the appliance, so that is worth getting right rather than fitting whatever is on the van.
Will I need planning permission?
Repair and repointing, no. Removal is normally permitted development on an ordinary house, but not if you are in a conservation area, and Croydon has 21 of them. Addiscombe's Chatsworth Road area is stricter still, with an Article 4 direction covering all roof alterations. Caterham and Warlingham are Tandridge, Wallington is Sutton, West Wickham is Bromley. Ask the right council.
Also worth a look: Roof leak repairs ·Storm damage repairs ·Roof replacement
Where we work
Chimney Repairs across the whole borough and over the boundary where it makes sense - from the Victorian terraces at the Thornton Heath end up onto the chalk at Kenley, Coulsdon and Sanderstead, and out to Wallington, Caterham, Warlingham and West Wickham.
What Croydon homeowners say
From roads across the borough, once the ladders had gone.
"Damp patch on our landing ceiling for about three years. Two roofers had been out and both mended the tiles directly above it, and neither made the slightest difference. This chap spent twenty minutes in the loft with a torch before he even went outside, then showed me a photo of a split in the lead in the valley about four metres away from the stain. Fixed it in a morning. Three winters on and nothing."
"Water was coming down the front bedroom wall every time it rained hard and I had convinced myself the roof was finished. It was the gutter. Half of it had dropped so the water was sitting in the middle and going over the front rather than down the pipe. He reset the brackets and cleared the gully, charged me a fraction of what I had budgeted for, and told me the roof itself had years left. Could easily have sold me a new one."
"Ours is in the Chatsworth Road conservation area and I had no idea the rules on roof work here are stricter than the rest of Croydon. He knew straight away, explained what I could and could not do without an application, and did the repair in matching slate. That saved me a very awkward conversation with the council later on."
"Lost most of the ridge tiles along the back in a February gale. Rang in the morning, sheeted the same afternoon so the weather could not get in, came back the following week when it was dry and rebedded the whole ridge properly. Sent me photos of everything for the insurance without me even asking. The bill was exactly what the quote said it would be."
"Gutters had been overflowing under the trees for years and the fascia behind them had gone soft. What I appreciated was that he explained why the timber had rotted rather than just quoting to replace it, and pointed out the new soffits needed vents or I would end up with condensation in the loft instead. Nobody had ever mentioned that to me before."
Had us out to your roof?
Two minutes writing a review does more for a small local firm than any amount of advertising, and it helps the next person in Croydon work out who to ring.
Get a free chimney repairs quote
Ring and describe what you can see, or send a message and somebody will come out and put their head in your loft. It costs nothing to find out what is wrong. The price you are quoted is the price you pay. And if the answer turns out to be that it can wait another few years, that is what you will be told.