Chimney Repairs · Selsdon CR2
Chimney Repairs In Selsdon
Damp on the chimney breast in your Selsdon semi?
Stack repointing, lead and back gutter repairs for the houses of Selsdon's old garden village
Most chimneys in Selsdon belong to the 1920s and 1930s semis of the old garden village, on Selsdon Park Road, Farley Road, Addington Road and the streets in between. They went up under plain tile or early concrete tile, and much of the timber and leadwork around them has been in place for close to a century. Then there are the trees. Selsdon Wood and the big gardens near it shed leaves and twigs that pile up behind a stack, in the narrow lead gutter on its uphill side. Water backs up there, works its way under the lead and appears as a damp patch on a bedroom wall.
Chimney Repairs quote in Selsdon
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.
The people behind it
The two brothers who'll look at your chimney
Roof Repairs Croydon is family-run. Brothers John and Mark own it, and they reckon they've always done their best work as a pair, which is handy, because they've never had the falling-out people expect from brothers in business.
On a chimney under Selsdon's trees, that means one of them is rarely working it out alone. They quote and decide together without fuss, and customers often say the whole thing feels refreshing compared with the usual roofer.
1,000+
Roofs put right
10 year
Written workmanship guarantee
£0
To have somebody come and look
Repair first
Replacement is the last resort
Chimney trouble, and where it usually starts
Some of these are obvious from the garden. Others only show up indoors. Either way, the cause is often simpler than the damage makes it look.
Damp high on the chimney breast after heavy rain
Often the lead gutter on the uphill side of the stack is packed with leaves. Rain spills over the lead and runs into the roof alongside the chimney.
Green staining down one face of the stack
That face never dries properly, usually because a tree shades it. Damp brick and mortar wear faster, and frost speeds it up.
Gaps where mortar used to be
The joints have eroded with age. Once they open up, rain soaks into the stack and comes through on the inside.
Cracks in the mortar round the pots
The flaunching has shrunk and split over the years. Water gets in at the very top of the stack and works its way down.
What a proper chimney repair should include
Back gutter cleared and checked
We get the leaves out first, then look at the lead underneath for splits or an upstand too low to hold the water back.
New lead where the old has failed
Split or patched lead is replaced, dressed down onto the tiles and wedged into the brick joints.
Mortar suited to the brick
The repointing mix is matched to the brick, so the joints wear before the brick faces do. That is the right way round.
Moss off the brickwork
Shaded faces carry moss that holds water against the stack. We scrape it off the brick and the tiles around the base while we're up.
Unused flues capped
A cowl or ventilated cap on a flue that no longer serves a fire keeps rain out without sealing the flue shut.
Ten year guarantee
The work on your stack is covered for ten years, and you get that in writing.
Why Selsdon chimneys get damp
The garden village went up from the mid-1920s, and many of its houses still have their first stacks. The brick tends to outlast everything around it. The weak points are the parts that were never expected to last a hundred years: the original mortar in the joints, the flaunching on top and the lead where the stack passes through the roof. When those go, water gets into the stack, and a stack holds water for a long time.
Trees change things. A stack with an oak or beech nearby gets more leaf in its back gutter, more moss on its shaded side and more damp held against its brick. In Selsdon that covers a lot of houses. Clearing the back gutter once a year, after the leaves have fallen, does more for a chimney under trees than most repairs will. If yours is hard to reach, that is a job worth adding to any visit when we're already on the roof.
"Around Selsdon, the back gutter behind the stack, where leaves pile up against the brick, is where we most often end up tracing a damp chimney breast."
From chimney repairs enquiries in Selsdon handled by Roof Repairs Croydon
Repairing a Selsdon chimney, step by step
Trace the damp
We start inside, at the stain, and work out whether it lines up with the stack, the back gutter or the flashing down one side.
Clear, then inspect
On the roof, leaves and moss come out of the back gutter so we can see the lead properly. Then we check the joints, flaunching and pots.
Explain and price
We show you photos of what we found, then put the price in writing, with access as a separate line.
Put the lead right
Split or patched lead is cut out and replaced. A back gutter gets an upstand tall enough to hold water until it drains away.
Repoint and reflaunch
Joints that have worn back are cleaned out and repointed, and the top gets new flaunching sloped away from the pots.
Tidy and hand over
We clear the gutters below of anything the job has dropped into them, then hand over photos and your guarantee.
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
Checking a chimney quote before you say yes
Is the back gutter mentioned?
On a stack under trees, the back gutter is often the real culprit. A price that covers only the pointing may be fixing the wrong thing.
Does it actually say lead?
Flashings should be lead, not a mortar fillet or a strip of bitumen tape. If the quote is vague about the material, ask what it means.
Will you see photos?
You can't easily see your own stack from the ground. Photos from before and after let you check what was found and what was done.
Repoint and reflash, or rebuild from the roof line?
Most stacks on Selsdon's interwar semis need repairing, not rebuilding. A rebuild is for brickwork that has failed all the way through, or a stack that's on the move.
| Comparison point | Repoint and reflash | Rebuild from roof level |
|---|---|---|
| When it's right | Joints open, lead tired, brick still sound. | Bricks crumbling through, or a stack that has leaned. |
| What happens | Rake out, repoint, reflaunch, new lead. | Taken down to the roof, rebuilt, then new lead. |
| Brick | The original stays. | Matching or reclaimed brick needed. |
| Shared stack | Your half only, no notice needed. | Party Wall notice normally required. |
| Access | Tower or scaffold, depending on the roof. | Scaffold, every time. |
| Cost | The cheaper of the two. | Several times more. |
Flat roofs in Selsdon and Forestdale
Not every house here has a stack worth worrying about. If your roof trouble is on a garage, a back extension or one of Forestdale's low roofs, our page on flat roof repairs in Selsdon is the one to read.
What a Selsdon chimney repair costs, and why
Three things decide most of it: how we get to the stack, how much lead needs replacing and how far the mortar has gone.
Trees around the house
On the garden-village roads near Selsdon Wood and along Farley Road, branches close to the roof can make putting up a tower or scaffold harder. Now and then they need trimming before we can start.
Shared stacks on semis
Plenty of semis share a stack with next door. Doing both halves together splits the access cost. Doing only one half means paying for scaffold to repair half a chimney.
Lead versus pointing
A back gutter or a run of step flashings is more work than a simple front apron. If the stack only needs its top reflaunched, the bill is much smaller.
Chimney Repairs in Selsdon: questions
Do I need planning permission for chimney work in Selsdon?
Selsdon is a London Borough of Croydon area, and the council there looks after planning and building control. Repointing, reflaunching and new lead are repairs and don't normally need permission. Removing or visibly altering a stack can need checking if the house is in a conservation area, so ask Croydon Council before you take one down. Forestdale is not a conservation area. Where next door shares the stack, taking it down or rebuilding it brings in the Party Wall etc. Act 1996. Your neighbour has to be given notice before work starts.
Do trees near my chimney cause damage?
Not directly, unless branches rub against it. The harm comes from what they leave behind. Leaves block the back gutter, and shade keeps the brick damp, so moss grows and frost does more damage. Trimming branches back from the roof and clearing the back gutter each year helps a great deal.
Is my Selsdon chimney original?
If your house is one of the 1920s or 1930s garden-village semis and the stack has never been rebuilt, it may well be. That isn't a problem in itself. Brick that age can be perfectly sound. It's the mortar, flaunching and lead that need renewing over time.
We don't use the chimney any more. Should we take it down?
You can, but you don't have to. An unused stack still needs looking after, so if it keeps causing damp, removal is worth pricing. If you'd rather keep it, a ventilated cap on the flue and sound lead round the base will usually stop the damp.
How do I tell whether damp is from the chimney or the roof?
Look at where it sits. Damp on the chimney breast itself, or right beside it, points to the stack or its lead. Damp running along the top of an outside wall is more often an overflowing gutter. On a survey we look at the stack, the lead and the gutters, then tell you which it is.
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.
Things to do in Selsdon
The same woods that fill Selsdon's back gutters with leaves make it a fine place for a walk.
Selsdon Wood
Opened in 1936 after campaigners stopped it being built on. Oak, beech, ash and sweet chestnut cover around 200 acres, on land the National Trust owns and the council manages.
View on Google Maps - Selsdon Wood
Littleheath Woods
Open to the public since 1932, thanks to residents who saved it from building. Its 64 or so acres of wood and grass stretch from Littleheath Road across to Croham Valley Road.
View on Google Maps - Littleheath Woods
Bramley Bank
Entered from Riesco Drive on the Shirley side, this London Wildlife Trust reserve mixes woodland and acid grassland around a pond used by all five native amphibians.
View on Google Maps - Bramley BankSelsdon on the map
Croydon Council covers Selsdon. From our base on Penwortham Road, South Croydon, it's roughly a 7 minute drive.
Areas we cover
We also repair chimneys in Sanderstead, South Croydon, Shirley and every other town listed here.
Chimney Repairs by town
Have your Selsdon chimney looked at before winter
Ring 020 4538 1998, or send over pictures of the chimney and the damp patch. We're open 8am to 6pm, Monday to Saturday. Once we've been up, you'll get a free written price.