Canterbury · Chimney repairs
Chimney stack re-rendered and repointed, Canterbury
The render on this Canterbury chimney stack had blown: cracked, coming away from the brick and already falling off in patches. We put scaffold up, took the old render off back to the brick, repointed the brickwork at the top of the stack, renewed the flaunching around the pots, and re-rendered the stack. Scaffold went up on 24 October 2026 and the finished photo is from 1 November.
- Problem
- Blown, cracked render coming off the stack
- Old render
- Removed back to the brick
- Pointing
- Brickwork at the top of the stack repointed
- Flaunching
- Renewed around the pots
- Render
- Two coats, scratch coat then finish
- Photos
- 24 October to 1 November 2026
Why blown render is worth sorting
Render on a chimney is there to keep water out of the brickwork. Once it cracks and lets go of the brick it does the opposite: water gets in behind it and has nowhere to go, and in a cold snap it freezes and pushes more of it off. Patching over loose render rarely lasts, because a patch is only as good as the old render around it. On this stack the render was coming away across most of the face, so the proper fix was to take it all off and start again.
Back to the brick, then back up
With the old render off, the brickwork could be seen and dealt with. The exposed brick at the top of the stack was repointed, and the flaunching was renewed. Flaunching is the sloped mortar around the base of the pots that throws rain off the top of the stack; when it cracks, water runs straight down inside the chimney. Then the stack was re-rendered in two coats of sand and cement: a scratch coat, scored so the next coat grips, then the finish coat.
The job, in order
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