Cracked and Tilted Chimney
There are several reasons why a chimney might crack or tilt away from your home. The older your home, the more susceptible your chimney is to damage. Sometimes chimneys are constructed with inadequate structural support. More often, though, the supporting soils beneath your chimney are the culprit. Over time, the soil that supports your foundation will compact, shrink, and/or erode, which will cause the ground to shift. Your chimney is a rigid structure and wasn’t made to move or flex with shifting soil conditions. Ultimately, the ground movement causes the bricks, masonry, and mortar to crack, and your chimney begins to separate from your home. In cases of subsidence, when the ground beneath your home fails because something underneath it has been removed (like water or soil), the ground no longer has the same physical support beneath as when your home was built, and that ground may no longer be suitable to support your chimney’s weight. The function of your chimney is to send the fire smoke up, out, and away from the interior of your home. Once the bricks are compromised, there is every chance the flue and the opening will no longer complete that transfer, and the smoke will remain inside your home and create a toxic situation. If you are concerned that you may need chimney repair in Mobile, call MDH Foundation Repair for a free assessment.
Note that if your chimney is becoming unstable due to soil conditions, the rest of your home is at risk as well. A cracked and tilted chimney is almost always an indication that an even bigger issue has occurred. If the chimney has shifted, there is no doubt that your foundation has also moved with the changes in the soil that surrounds and supports it. Your foundation is concrete or masonry, and just like your chimney, it was not made to flex. Cracks in the foundation compromise the structural stability of your entire home, and the longer those cracks go unrepaired, the more probability that you’ll be faced with costly repairs sometime in the future. MDH Foundation Repair can provide your home in Mobile with chimney repair services.
Cracked, Tilted, or Leaning Chimney
Cracked, Tilted, or Leaning Chimney
Diagnosing and Fixing the Problem
MDH Foundation Repair will most often use a helical pier system in your Mobile home to stabilize your tilting chimney and reinforce your foundation. Heavy-duty steel piers manufactured with a spiral blade are augered deep into the surrounding supporting soil in order to adequately support the stack. Installing a helical pier system in your Mobile home can save you even further costly foundation repair headaches in the future, not just your chimney.
When you notice cracks in your chimney or see that it has begun to separate from your home, contact MDH Foundation Repair in Mobile for your chimney and foundation repair services. Let’s get started sooner rather than later, so you won’t have to pay much more down the road.
