The photo says it all. The home was inspected and this turned up in the inspector’s report. The roof has about 8 yrs more life, according to the report, but this drainage problem needs fixing now. The roof is a 4:12 pitch. Ideas?
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Need some help?
Yeah, the picture might say it all, if we could see it.
In the general case you should have a "cricket" uphill from the broad face of a chimney. But (too) often chimneys are positioned in inappropriate locations such as valleys, and fixing such messes is challenging at best.
photo missing?
That is so weird you guys can't see the photo. I can. What is going on? Should I delete the post and start over? Or should I try the edit process...I'll try that.
Be right back.
can you see it now?
I uploaded the same photo, and now when I look at the post there are two identical photos. I bet you guys are gonna tell me you can't see either one.
I'm guessing the first time you didn't really upload the photo, but somehow referred to it on your system.
But now, which photo should we look at, the one that's upside down, or the one that's a negative image. ;)
Your chimney needs crickets. Crickets are basically mini gable shaped pieces of sheet metal that deflect the water to the sides of the chimney. Or in your case on the bottom roof away from the wall. I can see everything perfectly well, but I'm on a Mac.
Some of the black may be just dirt, but like everyone said, it would be better with crickets. The chimney needs to be checked for rot, and if it's OK, there probably is proper flashing under it. Definitely a poor design though!
The upper portion, by itself, is a situation where a cricket would be nice but would be skipped by many builders since it's the narrow side of the chimney. In the lower corner the cricket would be more desired (especially in snow country) since you have a "captive" situation with the water.
The bigger problem is really the spill-over, and solve that some careful design of an upper cricket is probably needed, so that the water is "kicked out" and over the edge before it reaches the chimney face.
It's gonna be hard to install the crickets correctly since the flashing will have to be let into the stucco, and that takes more than average skill. You need to find a guy who knows what he's doing.
I'm guessing that this is an older home so the situation has been going on for some time. If that is correct then you may very well have water saturated sheathing and framing. Probably some rot going on in there, too. You will have to remove the stucco from the chimney chase to properly asses the situation and to do a proper fix. Besides the chimney chase, that sidewall adjacent to the lower roof may not have been flashed properly.
If you are extremely lucky, the builder actually installed proper flashing beneath the stucco. If so, then what you see is simply surface dirt and stain. The structure below might be still high and dry. Is there evidence of water infiltration inside the house?