When your home develops a chimney leak, your first instinct may be to call a roofing company to have the problem handled. However, their expertise is in roofing, not chimneys. There are a range of reasons why you should call a chimney expert to handle your chimney leak, which we’ll cover in this post.

Don’t Call a Roofer for Your Chimney Leak, Call a Chimney Expert!

Let’s start with the preliminary problem: you have a leak that is allowing moisture into the area around your chimney. A roofer will see the problem as one that has to do with sealing the area around the leak, consider the job to be completed, bills you, and goes from there. Unfortunately, that may not be the end of the problem, especially if the issue extends beyond the flashing where the roof meets the chimney.

When you have a leak in or around your chimney, it can have several possible causes. Your chimney cap, which helps keep birds and animals out of your chimney, may have come loose or come off entirely. That allows water down the inside of your chimney, along with debris, animals, and larger insects that would be stopped by the screening. It also allows coals and sparks to escape your chimney, a potential fire hazard that a roofer may not recognize.

If the leak is coming through your masonry work, it can allow moisture in the area to freeze and thaw, causing more masonry to fail. This can cause smoke to escape your flue liner into the rest of the home, which can lead to carbon monoxide poisoning, a potentially fatal condition. The roofer may simply see cracks in the brick and seal the bricks from the outside without addressing the existing moisture between the layers or the additional damage.

By having a chimney leak handled by an expert chimney leak repair service, Indianapolis residents can ensure that not only is the leak fixed, but any other problems are also handled at the same time. This can save you significant time and effort over having the work redone by a second company because something was missed in the process. If you need help with your chimney leak, contact Clean Sweep 317 in Indianapolis for expert chimney leak repair services today!