Save the Chimneys - Part 2

Stumped Chimney with cement cap closing off one flu. Dangerous!
Several Stumped and parged chimneys
"Stumped" Chimney
Over the years wandering "Fair Weather Fixers" have been going door to dor in this high density chimney hood offering their "Fast Buck Solutions" to our aged stacks. They gladly take your $250.00, buy a cheap bag of the wrong mortar and start pointing or parging away. Customers feel gratified because someone actually went up on the roof and "said" they solved all of their woes. Happy with this megashot of bliss they pay up thinking they are in chimney nirvana. Well here is a list of all of the things that these chimney charletons leave behind: They always use the wrong mortar which is too hard and causes the bricks to virtually explode. Did you ever find a piece of loose brick in your yard or in your gutter and wonder where it came from? They always lop off the top of the chimney, eliminating all of it's original and historically significant detail. They parge a cap onto the top coarse of bricks which they sell as a water shed. They caulk instead of point. They butter the entire chimney with mortar. They "Stump" the chimney to unsafe heights which can cause draft problems. Several homes on this street have their flu's completely capped off with cement. If a new, unsuspecting homeowner decides to use his chimney for a heater he will poison himself to death. Not that long ago, a very dear senior citizen neighbour who was always paranoid that "kangaroos" might come into her house via the chimney gladly paid one of these mutants to stump her chimney under the roof line. Now the hole is blocked off with some tin and pitch just waiting to leak. The chimney is completely gone!Yeah for the kangaroos! The pictures above show a few examples of this "out of sight, out of mind" repair work.
Next time out we will be in the kitchen with Martha cooking up original recipe morter.