Chimney repairs in Taunton

There are several ways in. Rain can fall straight down an open pot and soak the inside of the flue. It can seep through cracked flaunching or porous pointing on the stack. It can get past lifted flashing at the roof line, or round a back gutter choked with leaves. Some stacks were built with a damp-proof tray, a lead or slate layer set across the stack near roof level to stop water soaking down the brickwork into the house; others never had one. Not every damp breast is a roof fault, though. A flue sealed at both ends with no air moving through it can gather condensation, and old soot inside a flue holds salts that draw moisture from the air and mark plaster in brown patches.

We start by asking when it shows. Damp that appears only in driving rain from one direction points to the face of the stack or the flashing on that side. Damp that stays through dry spells points to condensation or salts. Then we look at the stack itself, check the lead and the top, and go into the loft to see whether the brickwork or timbers round the stack are wet. Sometimes there are two faults at once, and fixing only one leaves the stain coming back the next wet winter, so we price both together and show you why. Our guide to a damp chimney breast covers the indoor side, including what to do about stained plaster once the stack has dried out.

With ventilation at both ends. A vented cap goes on each pot to keep the rain out, and a vent goes into the chimney breast in the room below, so air keeps moving up the flue. Seal a flue at the top and the bottom and the moisture trapped inside has nowhere to go, which is one cause of the damp breast described above. Our guide to capping a chimney covers caps, vents and what to do with the fireplace opening. Should you open the fireplace up again later, the cap comes off and a sweep checks the flue before any fire is lit.

Yes. We take the stack down below the roof line, strip out the old lead, add rafters and battens across the gap and cover it in slates or tiles matched to the rest of the slope, so the roof is watertight and the patch hard to spot. If the chimney breast inside is coming out too, the Planning Portal says Building Regulations approval will always apply, because the breast is part of the structure, and your building control body needs to hear from you before work starts. In a conservation area or on a listed home, check with Somerset Council's planning team before a stack comes down, or with Exmoor National Park Authority inside the Park. Our guide to removing a chimney stack weighs the cost against the upkeep it saves.