Chimney Flashing And Leaks

I knew the man up on the roof
He moved so slowly, step by step
Until he reached the parapet
Then gripped it tight between his thighs
The fear now vanquished from his eyes
He turned and looked at me, aloof

Then rose with trowel in trembling hand
And waddled forward, like a duck
His bucket filled with mortar muck
Until the chimney he did reach
Intending to repair a breach
Where brick had crumbled 'way like sand

He called me then (I'll not forget)
To fetch to him a pail of brick
My knees grew weak, my stomach sick
But from the ladder I did pass
And scurried upwards, on my ass
He'll be forever in my debt

We topped the last course with a crown
Then looked about, and called "Hello"
To people passing by below
And for a time we felt at ease
Relaxing in the evening breeze
Then wondered how we'd make it down.

MR

Yes, I know I'm using parapet loosely, but try rhyming with "step" with "ridge". In any case, chimney repair requires a mixture of skills, including masonry and flashing, not to ignore the ability to work off a ladder or balance at heights. I suspect one of the reasons there's such a limited selection of chimney rework videos on YouTube is it's tough to find somebody who wants to play cameraman or find a place to put a tripod:-) The following short video offers a view of a flashing job that includes what looks like a cow catcher to prevent buildup of leaves behind the chimney.

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I spent a couple hours yesterday morning patching up a leaky chimney but didn't make my own video, in part because I didn't want to get gunk all over my camera. The problem was a combination worn out mortar and a poor initial design when it comes to flashing. Chimney flashing is thin sheets of metal, usually aluminum, copper, lead or tin, that are inserted under the uphill roof covering, such as shingles, and then run up the exterior of the chimney beyond the height that water might accumulate. Flashing is heavily sealed with roofing tar or modern sealing compounds, which make up the seal between the metal and the rough surface of the brick and mortar.

When you have a chimney with a nice architectural feature, like a curved shoulder which juts out in a graceful sweep, you also have the problem with water running down that curve and trying to penetrate the house behind the siding. The particular repair I was working on yesterday was for a house with vinyl siding that jutted out a good inch from the old siding, leaving a gap that size along the chimney for water to course down. Over time, the water began to penetrate along that interface, stain the walls and drip into the cellar. It would have been nice if they'd flashed along the chimney when they installed the siding, but there was no simple way to do it after the fact. So I sealed the whole run along the vinyl siding with a couple tubes of grey cement repair caulk. When it dries out it should match decently:



I also tried an unorthodox flashing repair on the shoulder of the chimney where several bricks were half gone and the mortar was worn away. Rather than trying to rebuild that section of the chimney, which intersected with several large decorative sandstones, making refitting a pain, I tried flashing right over the bad area with a few six inch by 18 inch sheets of aluminum, heavily tarred on the uphill side and caulked along the edges. My gut feel is that it will hold out for a couple years, but not much longer. The choice was based on available materials, not best practices. I thought I'd throw in a link to a guy who runs a top homeowner repair site doing a temporary tar patch on his own garage roof to defend myself:-)

Repairing Wooden Chair Rung or Spindle

From formal dining rooms to country kitchens, wooden chairs are the standard in American homes. Unfortunately, even the best quality chairs tend to loosen up with time if the kids tilt them back on two legs, and just dragging them from room to room for a couple decades can do it as well. Even if you catch the problem fairly early, when the rung or spindle is just loose, putting in new glue and clamping the chair back together may not create a lasting repair. You're kind of stuck gluing over the old glue, which won't hold as well since it's not as porous as wood. If you sand the old glue off, you're just making the peg a looser fit in the hole. Cheaper chairs have the rails installed with brads or staples.

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Hub Kirkpatrick doesn't mess around, he glues the rung back in with liquid nails and then pins it in place with a wood screw through the leg. He drills a little pilot hole first to keep the screw from cracking the wood which he identifies as oak in this case, using what appears to be a Yankee push drill. My favorite part of the repair is that he doesn't countersink the head into the leg, he just leaves it sticking out. This is a repair that's intended to keep the chair together, and it wouldn't make sense to go over the top hiding the repair on what's consumer grade chair.

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I included this video of kids fooling around with a collapsing chair in a school because I seem to remember doing something similar way back when. In this case, it's a setup prank with newer metal stuff. The old oak furniture in New England schools seemed to last forever, in come cases, I'm sure it was part of the capital budget and never needed replacing. You can always repair wood furniture if you don't lose the parts, providing you're willing to use pegs or screws when gluing and clamping won't get the job done. Never try to repair a chair with nails. Furniture is made out of hardwood, and a regular nail will just cause the wood to crack.

Failed Tub Caulking Leads To Shower Leaks

There are all sorts of things in bathrooms that can lead to leaks, from the wax ring on the toilet failing to the grout in old tile work wearing away. The simplest leaks to fix are those caused by caulk that has peeled out from the intersection of a bathtub along the walls or the floor. Sometimes it's over earnest cleaning of mold from the caulking that leads to its demise, but in all cases, it's no big deal. The key to recaulking any joint is doing a good job cleaning out the old caulk before you begin. If you've never done any sealing type work before, this might strike you as counterintuitive, after all, who wants to make the problem worse (look at that huge gap!) before making it better. But caulk on seals best on clean, smooth surfaces, which old caulking doesn't provide. First, a look at why caulking is important:

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Now, telling you to clean out the caulk is one thing, doing it is another. Old silicon caulk is especially annoying to clean up because it retains its elasticity and adhesion to the original surfaces, meaning if it doesn't peel out, you'll have to carefully scrape it. Box cutters and putty knives are common tools for removing old caulking, while some guys prefer using an old credit card or bus pass that they can keep trimming down to keep the edge sharp and free of accumulated silicon. The most important part to clean is the opposite edges of the gap that is being filled. If the original sealant crept way up the side of the tub, wall or out on the floor, you might clean it up for aesthetics, but you aren't going to lay your bead out that far.

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Mark does a nice job showing the process, in this instance, the joint between the tub and the floor. It's easy enough to figure out whether it's the floor joint or the wall joint that's leaking by being careful not to splash water on the floor when you shower. If you reseal the joints around the tub and you're still getting leaks when the walls or the floor get wet, odds are the grouting between your tiles has become porous. There are a number or products you can use to reseal old grout, but I suspect they are all more or less temporary solutions. And almost everybody does use a finger to smooth out the bead and push it into the gap, but try to keep the bead even when you first apply it.

If you've never handled a caulking gun, the little tab on the handle is the release that lets you pull the plunger back out so you can remove the old tube. If the tube doesn't want to come out, it's probably stuck to the inside of the nose piece, so assuming the tube is used up and you aren't worried about saving it, bash the nose into something hard in order to pop it free. You always pull the front of the tube out of the holder first, as the plunger piston never retracts all the way out of the tube at the back.

Reflowing Solder Under BGA Processors

I'm kicking off the Fix It blog with two videos that show extremely different techniques for reflowing solder. Both are repairs that you could do at home, but the first is as professional as it gets for non-factory rework, while the second is a great example of "just make it work." The first repair is so meticulous that it may actually discourage you from trying unless you are an experienced technician, while the second is a 21 second clip showing a known and somewhat effective work-around.

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Reflowing solder with a heat gun is the "standard" homeowner fix for failed BGA (Ball Grid Array) connections. The tech in the video takes it a step further, removing the chip from the cellphone (desoldering at 608ºF or 320ºC or , using solder wick to clean the old solder from the processor and then adding a fresh new ball of solder to every contact. Then he cleans the old solder off the circuit board, and pre-coats all of the contacts with new solder. Finally the chip is placed back on the circuit board and heated to 572ºF or 300ºC until the the solder melts and reflows. Don't ask me how precise the temperatures on the heat gun really are:-)

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In the second video, the we see the classic burning alcohol trick in the shortest form I've seen. The commentary is by a third party (mother?) who is wondering why there's a little tin cup with an open flame sitting on the motherboard of the laptop computer. BGA solder failure was a known manufacturing defect on some runs of Apple iBooks and IBM T series laptops, and probably others besides. People worked out that the video processor BGA contacts were the problem by physically pressing on the chip and seeing their video work. The first attempt at repair is usually jurt jamming something non-conductive between the chip and the case to keep the contacts pressed together, but that fix usually stops working after a while, so reflowing the solder becomes the only solution.

The classy fix, removing and reapplying the solder is no doubt a more reliable repair, but I wouldn't want to try it on a chip with hundreds of pins on a serious computer processor, rather than a cell phone chip. The classy fix also requires real skills, steady hands, a good soldering iron and heat gun. The alcohol kludge only requires a penny worth of alcohol and a tin to put it in.