Chimney Pulling Away From My House

You may be driving by your house or standing in your front yard when you suddenly get a startling look and observe that your chimney is pulling away from your house. This discovery causes you to feel uneasy. As soon as you hear it, your mind immediately jumps to the worst-case scenario, since you are an experienced homeowner (or even a novice, first-time homeowner), and you are aware that it is never a good indication when the structural components of your home aren’t aligned properly.

Before you start to freak out, you should remember that a chimney that is leaning is not the end of the world. However, it is an important problem that should be prioritized in order to find a solution in a timely manner. A chimney that leans to one side is a common occurrence in older homes and is typically the result of the passage of time. Fixing these issues does not necessitate taking the entire building apart brick by brick, despite the fact that it could look like your entire home is in the process of coming apart completely.

What are the Roots of a Sloping Chimney?
There is a wide range of potential causes for your chimney to have moved away from your house, one or more of which might be responsible. Typically, there is more than one component at play when it comes to structures that are guilty of doing this to others. Chimneys are by no means lightweight; in fact, their weight might reach several tons. In order to conform to the norms that are in place today, this concentration of weight in a relatively limited region fashioned like a pillar needs to be built in a certain way.

If you are a homeowner, you are probably wondering if there are any preventative tactics that can be used to maintain your chimney in place, or if there was something that you could have done to stop it from leaning in the first place. You can take comfort in the knowledge that you are unable to have any influence on the external variables that contribute to the aging of the home and the foundation in the surrounding area. This is sometimes the most straightforward explanation.

Deterioration of the Structures
People who live in the Midwest are accustomed to having bitterly cold winters that are followed by seasonally opposite, scorching hot summers. These variations in weather and temperature decrease contribute to the destruction of homes and the structures that they are built upon. Concrete has a propensity to fracture as a result of the changeable nature of the weather and is susceptible to this flaw. Moisture can become trapped in the foundation when it goes through cycles of freezing and thawing, which can hasten the process of deterioration.

Improper Installation
There is no way to know what transpired during the construction of the chimney at the very beginning. The standards and criteria that are used in chimney building nowadays are adhered to very strictly; however, depending on who built your chimney and when, this could not have been the case.

Chimneys are constructed to resist the intense heat and flames produced by a fireplace. As a result, chimneys are made to be sturdy and robust in order to cope with these challenging conditions. If some standards for building a chimney are disregarded in the process, then you will quickly see tilting as a result of its bad design.

An Insufficiently Large Base
An older house may have been built with a few flaws or it may have been subjected to the elements of age that have degraded what was once a strongly built chimney into one that is slowly degrading. Both of these scenarios are possible in an older house.

This might suggest that the foundation of the chimney is too tiny to support its weight, or it could mean that time has taken its toll on the base, which is the most crucial portion of the chimney. Either way, this is bad news for homeowners. The foundation for the chimney needs to have a thickness of one foot and extend six inches on each side for it to be considered sturdy. The footing gives the building the solidity it needs and keeps it from tilting away from the home.

Better to be safe than sorry. Let the experts handle your chimney troubles like Chimney Cleaning Smith River and repairing. Call Local Chimney Sweep Cleaning today.

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