I'm going to start doing that. Never had a problem with it here before, but fool me once ...
We had water problems up the ying yang in Alaska, which finally turned out to be a fireplace chimney that we weren't even using. Water was seeping through the bricks and mortar of the chimney and creeping along the ceiling until it rained down on the living room. We had the chimney rebuilt, but the mason copied the original design exactly and it too started to leak. We had another mason look at it, and he told us the whole design was improper. It should have been two bricks thick and it was only one.
We had the chimney demolished and put in a metal chimney that lacked the charm of the brick one but did not leak.. We didn't use the fireplace, but we wanted to have it functional for selling the house.
When I stayed at a B&B while transitioning out of my job, the lady showed me a big crack in her rebuilt fireplace. It was built by the first mason, and if we had known each other at the time we could have gone after him. |
