Chimney Flashing Repair in High Point, NC

High Point Chimney Repair repairs and replaces chimney flashing on homes across High Point, North Carolina, rebuilding the roof-to-masonry joint properly instead of burying it under another layer of roofing cement.

The Joint Between Two Materials That Move Differently

Flashing is the metal assembly waterproofing the intersection where a chimney passes through a roof. It is the hardest joint on a house to keep dry, because a masonry chimney and a wood-framed roof expand, contract, and settle independently. Anything rigid spanning that gap eventually cracks.

Done correctly, flashing does not seal the gap — it layers over it, so water is shed across overlapping metal regardless of small movement.

Step Flashing

Individual L-shaped pieces woven into the roof courses along the sides of the chimney, one piece per shingle course, each lapping the one below. Because the pieces are separate, the assembly flexes without tearing.

Counter Flashing

The outer layer, embedded into a groove cut in the chimney’s mortar joints and folded down over the step flashing. This is the piece that keeps water from getting behind the step flashing at the masonry face. Correctly installed, it sits in a reglet — a saw cut into the mortar joint — and is wedged and sealed in place.

Base and Apron Flashing

The piece across the low side of the chimney where the roof meets the front face.

Crickets and Saddles

A small peaked structure built on the high side of a chimney to divert water around it. Required on wider chimneys, where the upslope face would otherwise act as a dam collecting water, ice, and debris. On any chimney more than about 30 inches wide across the slope, the absence of a cricket is a defect, not an option.

Why Flashing Fails

It was caulked instead of flashed. The most common failure we find. Someone ran roofing cement or sealant along the masonry-to-roof joint in place of proper counter flashing. Sealant is rigid, ultraviolet-degraded, and spanning a moving joint. It cracks, usually within a couple of years, and the crack is invisible from the ground.

The counter flashing was surface-mounted. Metal fastened flat to the brick face and caulked at the top edge, rather than let into a cut reglet. Same problem: it relies entirely on a bead of sealant.

Corrosion. Older galvanized flashing rusts through, particularly in the horizontal laps where water sits.

Roof replacement without flashing replacement. A roofing crew reuses old flashing or seals over it to save the cost and labor of cutting new reglets. Extremely common, and it means a brand-new roof with a decade-old leak path still in it.

Masonry deterioration at the reglet. The mortar joint holding the counter flashing erodes, and the flashing loses its anchorage.

How We Repair It

We remove what is there rather than adding to it. Layered roofing cement is scraped back so the actual condition of the joint is visible, because “just add more tar” is how a small flashing repair becomes rotted roof decking.

New step flashing is woven into the shingle courses. A fresh reglet is cut into a mortar joint, new counter flashing is formed and set into the cut, then wedged and sealed with a compatible sealant. Where the chimney is wide enough to need one, we frame and flash a cricket.

We use aluminum or copper depending on the roof and the chimney; copper on slate, tile, and period homes, aluminum on standard composition shingle. We do not reinstall galvanized.

Because a flashing leak has usually been running for a while before anyone notices the ceiling stain, we check the decking and framing around the chimney opening while the roofing is up. Finding soft decking after new flashing is installed means taking the new flashing back off.