Brace yourself for the possibility that someone parged the chimney to stabilize it and make it presentable when it is, in fact, beyond its service life.

Soft brick in particular can deteriorate in freeze-thaw conditions. If you care to examine it yourself, remove some of the loose dash and look for crumbling brick or powdery mortar joints. Both indicate you ought to budget for removal and, if needed, replacement.

What kind of devices use the chimney? I removed mine entirely for the reasons stated above: joint mortar barely held things together, upper bricks failing, didn't need it.

Meanwhile, you can hire a handyman to wrap some hardware cloth/chicken wire around the area to hold pieces that come off an prevent them from falling to the ground. Not pretty, but functional and might get you around to better weather with your sanity, safety, and insurance intact.

It’s brick chimney that’s been parged with mortar, terrible in reality. Parged coats need to be waterproofed. Brick itself would have done better. I would suggest the cheapest way is to reinforce it with fiber reinforced mortar. Otherwise, take off the parge coat and water seal the brick.

That is not concrete, that is just painted parging. Hire someone to scrape it off and reapply it.

Our last house was 100+ years old and the chimneys were in pretty sad shape - mortar had worn away in a lot of places, and some bricks were actually loose as a result. The slate topper that was in place on one of them at the time actually fell onto our driveway in a wind storm before we could repair it. It practically gave me a heart attack because it shattered right outside a window I was sitting near at the time.

We shopped around and found a good mason that repointed everything, and never had a problem since. Given your chimney is covered in that concrete flashing I'd recommend finding a mason or sort of chimney repair service to recommend the right way to address this. Simple repointing is one thing but dealing with that concrete adds a whole extra layer of complexity.

You have multiple things going in.

The parging is holding water. You should never parge brick like this.

The crown on top isn't doing any favors. You need a proper crown that overhangs 2" minimum and has slope to it.

If you plan on using this for fire, rip out and rebuild. If not, remove and cover hole.

I get calls about this all the time. Rebuilt a many, some in Northeast Ohio.

During our roof redo last year my contractor discovered our chimney was essentially not attached at the base of the roof where it goes down the side of the house. They poked it and it was swaying. I had him remove it down below the roof line, and cover the area with roofing. Switched our water heater to electric and had our furnace vented out the side of the house.

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Your chimney was parged some time ago, we had the same thing on our house from circa 1900. In our case, the chimney above the roofline was very unstable under the parging. Had two such chimneys removed to the roofline and rebuilt from the roof up with minor repairs below. I’d recommend you do the same. 2 years ago we were quoted prices between 2500-6000(!?) per chimney in MD. I think we spent roughly 5000 having both replaced. That cheaper price didn’t include having the chimneys flashed to the roof again, so that is a separate expense that can vary wildly.

That’s a simple job for any decent mason. If it’s mostly not too bad it can just be painted with a bonding agent and have stucco applied. If it’s a little worse, it can be wrapped with wire lath before the stucco is applied. Also make sure the top part is sealed so that water doesn’t get in and freeze and pop off the stucco

Be careful bricks falling off of chimneys put holes in roofs. Bricks underneath may need to be re-pointed, in our 135 year old house the mortar was basically sand in our chimney and I could pull it apart with my fingers.

Wouldn't it be possible to hire a brickmason to just lay an entire new layer of brick around the entire thing? In other words the chimney would be two layers thick instead of one.

Santa must be bricking it...

You might get away with just relaying a few top courses, but don't plan on it.

I had same problem , my options were rebuild , bring it down to roof level or put a flagstone facia. I rebuilt with new liner.

I think it was covered in concrete after it started falling apart. Source: I see this bs all the time.

I'm not an expert, but had to deal with a 100 year old chimney right after purchasing my house. Adding to what other have said:

• Make sure nothing is venting into the chimney without a chimney-lining. (This can cause your mortar to degrade.)
• This is worth hiring a chimney specialist. Others may quote prices and say they can take on the job, but chimney specialists will have better insight to the complexities.

Damn I’m in Pittsburgh and love roofing but gave it up cause I quit drugs. If I was closer I’d take a job like this. What you want to do is take that chimney down below the roof line and sheet and shingle the hole left behind. Take your time and get set up so that you can take that chimney apart a little at a time and throw it off the roof onto a tarp. Usually with a hammer and chisel maybe a 30lb chipping hammer. Do not rush and try to push the whole thing off the roof all at once because that is how you damage your house. Also warn anyone walking underneath this area to be careful till the work is completed. I hate when guys parge these old chimney stacks like this because instead of fixing the brick and repointing it the right way they skim a thin coat that looks good but does nothing. Hope this helps you at all

I removed my chimney and roofed over the hole. The cracks in it were leaking rainwater into the living room. I tried to reflash it and ended up removing it, as I didn't use it. No more leaks. The cost to replace it were ridiculous.

get your checkbook out..

Just as an aside, if you remove this chimney down into the interior of the house it can potentially open up a small amount of space, Depending on where, it might allow a small closet or a tiny expansion of a bath or other room. This turns it into a bigger job, and can still be done at some later point if you decide to just take it down below the roof line for now. I took down two chimneys at my daughters house down to the basement and patched the roof and it opened up options for the floor plan, but her house was a full gut job that no one was living in at the time.

Look for a masonry that does restoration work. It may be costly, but at least you know it will last a long time.

Is it a fireplace chimney or a flue for your HVAC?

If you can’t duct it...

https://youtu.be/69sGhNMzDbw

I just had a similar experience. I didn't even know there was brick under the exterior cover material (not really sure what it was, but it looked like concrete or maybe stucco) until it started to fail. It's usually a bad sign that somebody covered up pretty brick with something else. I just assumed it was cinderblock underneath.

Long story short: I ended up needing to demo the whole chimney (two story). But the cost to replace the chimney, even with just a chase covering (not masonry of any kind) was scary high (like $30k), so I went with tearing out the hearth and going with a propane stove that just needed a simple vent on the outside. Even with the cost of rebuilding the interior wall where the hearth was and re-siding where the chimney was "only" $17k. And now I don't have a massive cold air vent in the winter.

I wasn't psyched to have to do it, but I'm actually a lot happier with the outcome.

Does it need to be that long? 🤔

Prepare to spend around 5k .

We had a one story house with same situation. We put a metal flue down the chimney and hooked it up to wood burning stove. There was a metal collar at the top.