Home Improvement Stack Exchange is a question and answer site for contractors and serious DIYers. It only takes a minute to sign up.
Sign up to join this community
Whenever it rains, the ceiling becomes wet at the corner of the chimney.
I ASSUME it's just a small leak, but obviously I don't want it to become any worse. I have a flat roof, so getting up there and doing some work is pretty easy for me. Any suggestions on what I need to do? My Googlefu has come up with this plan of attack:
98% of small leaks are water getting into the flashing area between the chimney and the flashing or the flashing and the shingles.
The flashing sealant you have should work fine - although you need to make sure for a caulking type sealant that this is applied liberally and squeezed into the gaps. I often use FlexSeal for smaller leaks because of its expanding properties.
If you post a picture of your chimney I can highlight where you need to seal.
I had a similar problem. A rental house I maintain had a low pitched gravel roof that would leak around the chimney as soon as it rained. I looked at the obvious sections were water might penetrate around the chimney: flashing, brick mortar, the mortar cap on the brick, etc.. And used a few gallons of roof patch applied everyplace in the vicinity of chimney. Still leaked with no sign of slowing down. Pausing to think what I was missing and leaning on the chimney my eye caught the slightest sign of a hairline crack running on the inside of the flue vertically for about 10 inches. Peering more closely I could see the rain had ran down the inside wall of the chimney all around the break. Running out of possible entry points I chiseled to widen the crack, wire brushed the dust out, and troweled in cement patch. The tenant hasn't called about the roof leaking since. Conclusion: roof leaks aren't always in the roof.
