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Is Your Chimney Pulling Away From Your House?

Brick chimney separating from the foundation wall.

A leaning or tilting chimney often indicates a bigger problem with the chimney’s foundation, so you’ll want to take action as quickly as possible. If ignored, a damaged chimney might collapse, potentially causing a fire or structural damage.

If your chimney is pulling away from your house, a foundation repair method called underpinning might solve the issue. However, you’ll want to work with a professional rather than trying to fix things yourself.

Below, learn what causes a leaning chimney, how to fix the problem, and the next steps to take.

Why Is My Chimney Pulling Away From My Home?

The majority of chimneys have a foundation that’s separate from the one beneath the house. When this foundation settles or shifts, the chimney can crack, lean, or tilt and pull away from the rest of the home.

There are various reasons why chimney foundations settle and shift, including:

  • Soil conditions: Clay soil, common in New Haven and other areas of Connecticut, expands and contracts in different weather conditions, potentially causing the ground under your chimney’s foundation to move.
  • Frost heave: If water freezes in the soil beneath your chimney’s foundation, the soil can shift and affect the foundation. This process, known as frost heave, often happens during cold winters in New Haven.
  • Wear and tear: Older chimney foundations may deteriorate with age, resulting in shifting and settlement.
  • Growing tree roots: Tree roots that grow under your chimney’s foundation might be a problem, especially if they disrupt the soil.
  • Inadequate compaction: Soil not compacted properly during construction can lead to your chimney’s foundation settling.
  • Hydrostatic pressure: Hydrostatic pressure can occur due to poor drainage under your chimney’s foundation, resulting in chimney cracks and movement.

Identifying the cause of a leaning or tilting chimney might be difficult without a professional. Groundworks can inspect your home for free, determine the source of your chimney problem, and recommend solutions based on your needs.

Why Is a Damaged Chimney Bad?

When your chimney separates from your home, the following problems can occur:

  • Structural damage: A tilting or leaning chimney can jeopardize your home’s entire framework. In the worst-case scenario, your home could collapse.
  • Fire dangers: Gaps and cracks in a damaged chimney may allow heat and smoke to escape to other areas of your home, potentially causing a fire.
  • Falling bricks: Bricks can become loose and fall to the ground if a chimney can’t support its weight.
  • Property depreciation: Ignoring a chimney problem might depreciate your home and make it more difficult to sell.
  • Water damage: Water can enter your home through chimney cracks and gaps, causing wet floors, musty smells, mold growth, and other problems.

Fixing a Chimney That’s Pulling Away From Your Home

Underpinning can fix a leaning or tilting chimney in most scenarios. It involves stabilizing your chimney’s foundation by transferring its weight to load-bearing soil underground. Helical and push piers make this possible.

Helical Piers

Helical piers or screw piles prevent further shifting and settling in your chimney’s foundation. They screw deep into the ground, creating a strong anchor point that supports the foundation.

helical pier

Push Piers

Push piers transfer the weight of your chimney’s foundation to load-bearing soil, potentially restoring it to its original position.

Installing helical or push piers yourself can make your chimney problem worse, so leave things to professionals like Groundworks instead.

push pier

Choose Groundworks for Chimney Foundation Repair

A chimney pulling away from your home is never a good sign. However, repair solutions like helical and push piers can quickly resolve this problem and create a safer living environment.

Whatever the cause of your leaning or tilting chimney, Groundworks may be able to help. Serving New Haven County, our team has the home repair experience you need. Get in touch with us today to learn more.

FAQs

Chimney brick cracks don’t have to happen. Although it can feel as though this problem is inevitable, it isn’t. You just have to make sure you’re avoiding your potential chimney problems before you ever experience them.

  • Think About the Problems You Might Experience

The first step is to think about the problems that you might experience with chimney brick cracks. This is typically a step that an expert will do for you; they’re in charge of brainstorming the variety of ways in which you could experience chimney concerns.

The earlier you’re able to avoid potential problems, the more likely you are to solve them without any serious concerns. As soon as you notice a chimney issue, contact an expert to get early help with your chimney.

If you consider the potential problems that might arise for you, and the many forces that might work to put pressure on your chimney and chimney bricks you will have a chance to nip issues in the bud. This will save you money in the long-run, but also help you to protect your property effectively from several different potential issues.

  • Inspect the Chimney Whenever Possible 

There are many things that you can do, but the bottom line is that you may need to do a stronger inspection along the chimney whenever possible to truly get an idea of its health. Inspections are one of the best ways to ensure that you know what’s going on with your chimney. Of course, they are also slightly harder to undertake than, for example, basement inspections. If you can, you should check your chimney at least once a year. While it would be better to inspect it in good light in the summer, there’s no reason why you shouldn’t check it over while you are putting up the Christmas lights. If you are not confident in your ability to access or inspect the chimney, do not hesitate to book a professional inspection.

Although it can be tempting, you don’t want to manage chimney brick cracks yourself. What’s the problem with fixing them on your own? For the most part, it’s the fact that you really can’t do it properly. You’re unlikely to be able to fix the problem.

  • Difficult to Handle Properly

Chimneys aren’t easy to handle. You typically need some number of technical tools and often more than one person to manage a chimney. Because it’s unlikely that you have technical chimney-moving tools and you’re probably not thinking about how your friends can pitch in and help you, it’s unlikely that you’ll be able to do much with your chimney cracks.

The need for heavy equipment and specialist skills may not seem like an insurmountable issue, but there is also the matter of safety. There is no safe way for you to undertake structural repairs on an unstable chimney shaft with no specialist equipment or training to help you anticipate and manage the risks associated with it.

  • Not Effective

You can do your best, but without the proper tools and expertise, you’re not going to be able to fix the problem. At best, you’ll stave off the worst parts of it for another day. Rather than putting time, money, and energy toward something that almost certainly won’t work, consult an expert from Groundworks to get expert-level help.

Even if you manage to safely implement a repair on your chimney cracks, there would be no guarantee that these repairs would be effective. To provide an effective repair to your chimney, you will need to be able to assess the true causes of these cracks. If you cannot effectively ascertain this, then there’s no way to know if you have deployed an effective solution.

There are several unique fixes for your chimney brick cracks, but there are some things these fixes have in common. For the most part, a fix will involve stabilizing the chimney and re-attaching it to the rest of the home for maximum structural stability in both the short term and the long term. 

  • Understand the Reason for the Cracks

Your method of fixing your chimney brick cracks may depend on the cause. Are they happening because your chimney’s foundation is moving? Are they happening because the foundation of the rest of the home is moving? Are they happening just because the chimney had a low-quality initial construction? You have to answer all these questions before you can decide how to fix the cracks.

You can determine the answers to some of these questions by looking at the state of the rest of your home. If, for example, foundation damage is the cause of your chimney cracks, you will see other signs. Cracks in your basement flooring and walls, for example, or an uneven lean in your floors. 

  • Stabilize the Chimney

The first step to fixing your chimney is to stabilize it to ensure that you and your property are safe. There are many ways to stabilize a chimney, so you may find that a variety of different methods help you with your chimney stabilization options. An expert will be able to surmise the best method to stabilize your chimney before moving on.

Depending on the severity of the issues you are facing, the process of stabilization could be very quick or incredibly lengthy. If your repair specialist feels that your chimney presents an immediate danger, they may instead suggest that you expedite repairs or even stage a controlled collapse. This may seem extreme, but an uncontrolled collapse could be lethal. 

  • Reattach the Chimney to the Rest of the Home

The chimney often doesn’t have a direct attachment to the rest of the home, but if you’re having chimney brick cracking problems, you might need to attach the chimney to the home. This provides the chimney with extra stability as well as a sturdy source of long-term support. This may not be the best option for you, however, so you should always ask for an expert opinion.

If your chimney is meant to be attached to the rest of your home and it has started to pull away, this is a very serious issue that warrants immediate attention from a repair specialist. If this structure collapses your whole property will be in real danger of following suit, and your health will, of course, be in immediate danger. Thankfully, the team at Groundworks knows exactly what to do to deal with this situation.

Ted Dryce

Ted Dryce

Content Writer

Ted is an SEO Content Writer who has been with Groundworks since 2021. He’s covered home repair topics ranging from crawl space encapsulation to regional soil conditions. When he’s not working, Ted is performing improv comedy and working on his own creative projects.