If you are considering having a chimney stack removed from a property in Honing, here is a straightforward account of how a professional take-down works from start to finish.
Call any time. Calls are answered day and night and passed straight to our roofers.
A chimney take-down looks straightforward from the outside - knock it down, tile over the hole - but the quality of the finished job depends entirely on what happens at each stage. Knowing what a proper job involves means you can ask the right questions, follow what is happening on the day, and judge whether the work has been done correctly.
The following covers every stage in order, from the initial assessment through to clearing up and checking the result.
Before any scaffolding goes up or any brickwork comes down, the roofer needs to assess the stack and the surrounding roof carefully. This is not a formality - what is found at this stage shapes the whole job.
The assessment looks at the height of the stack above the roofline, the condition of the brickwork and mortar joints, the state of the lead flashing and how it is dressed into the stack, and the condition of the tiles or slates surrounding the chimney. The roofer should also look inside the loft at the framing around the chimney opening - the trimmer rafters and headers that were built to carry the roof around the stack - and assess whether any of that timber has been affected by damp.
The position of the stack on the roof matters too. A stack sitting at the ridge requires a different approach to one on a lower slope, and a stack in a valley between two pitches is more complex again. These details affect the amount of work, the materials needed, and the time required.
Chimney take-down work requires safe working at height, which means scaffold or a properly designed access platform. A competent roofer will not attempt this work off a ladder alone. The scaffold needs to reach above the stack and allow the roofer to work freely around all four sides, because brickwork comes down course by course and needs to be lowered safely - not dropped.
For a typical domestic stack, a tube-and-fitting scaffold tied to the wall of the house is the standard approach. On taller stacks or properties with difficult access, the design of the scaffold becomes more involved. The cost of scaffold hire is a real part of the job cost and should appear on any quote you receive.
Work starts at the top. The chimney pots are lifted off first - they are typically bedded in mortar and need to be broken out carefully to avoid damage to the brickwork below. If the pots are in sound condition they can be kept, but on a take-down job they are usually disposed of with the rest of the rubble.
The haunching - the sloped mortar fillet around the base of the pots - is then broken away. This is done with a bolster chisel and lump hammer, working carefully to avoid destabilising the brickwork below before it is ready to come down.
The brickwork is taken down one or two courses at a time, working from the top down. Each course is broken out using a bolster and hammer or, on harder mortar, a small electric breaker. Bricks are either lowered in a bucket or passed down to a colleague on the scaffold below. Large pieces of masonry must never be allowed to drop onto the roof tiles.
The stack is taken down to just below the roof surface - typically to around 150mm below the tile line so that the remaining masonry is concealed and the make-good sits flush. The cut-off point needs to be level and flat to give the mortar fillet or capping a solid base.
As each course comes off, the lead flashing steps are freed from the mortar joints. Old lead is removed and set aside.
Once the stack is down to roof level, there is a pause to assess what is there. The top of the remaining masonry is checked for stability. The roofer looks at the rafters and any trimmer timbers around the opening for signs of rot or damp damage. If the chimney was leaking, it is common to find at least some staining on the timber, and occasionally softness that indicates active decay.
Any compromised timber needs to be cut out and replaced, or a new piece of timber sistered alongside the existing one to restore full bearing. Skipping this step is a false economy - covering over rotten timber leads to further problems within a few years.
The top of the remaining brickwork is brought to a flat, level finish and then capped with a mortar fillet, sloped slightly to shed water. This cap sits below roof level so it is not exposed to the elements directly, but it still needs to be sound to prevent water sitting on top of the masonry.
Some roofers use a proprietary lead or DPC cap over the remaining masonry as well, which provides additional protection and is worth asking about if the surrounding area is prone to pooling water in heavy rain.
With the masonry dealt with, the roofing work begins. The existing roofing felt or breather membrane around the opening is cut back to sound material. New felt is then cut to size and lapped correctly into the existing - typically a 100mm lap minimum - to form a continuous waterproof layer beneath the tiles.
Counter-battens and tiling battens are fixed over the new felt, again lapped into the existing batten line so that the tile courses will run level and consistent with the surrounding roof.
Matching tiles or slates are then laid in from the bottom of the opening upwards, each course interlocking with the one below and fixed with nails into the battens. The surrounding courses are lifted where necessary to allow the new tiles to be properly integrated, rather than just pushed underneath the existing ones, which would leave a weak and potentially leaky joint.
Where the stack was at or near the ridge, new ridge tiles may need to be reset or extended to close the gap. This is done in mortar bedding or with a dry-ridge system depending on what the surrounding ridge uses.
Before the scaffold comes down, the roofer should check the loft space to confirm that the new felt and batten work is correctly lapped and that there are no visible light gaps or openings. Any insulation that was disturbed or removed to allow access to the timber framing is replaced.
If there was an active leak before the take-down, the customer should be advised that internal damp patches may take several weeks to dry out fully once the source of water ingress is removed. The plasterwork on a chimney breast inside the house may need to be hacked off and re-done if it has been saturated.
Rubble from the demolished stack - bricks, mortar, old lead, broken pot - comes off the roof and is loaded for disposal. Bricks are heavy and the volume from a single stack can be considerable. Disposal should be to a licensed facility and this cost is normally included in the quote. Check this when comparing prices.
The scaffold is then struck and the area around the property left clear. The finished roof should show no visible sign that a chimney was ever there, other than the absence of the stack itself.
A correctly executed chimney take-down is a permanent solution. The typical cost for a standard single stack in this part of Norfolk - including scaffold, demolition, roof make-good and rubble disposal - falls broadly between £1,000 and £2,500, with more complex jobs sitting above that range.
We carry out chimney take-downs for homeowners in Honing and the surrounding area, working from our base in North Walsham. Call us to arrange an assessment and we will walk you through exactly what your job involves before any work starts.
No obligation · We'll call you to arrange a free visit
Call any time. Calls are answered day and night and passed straight to our roofers.
