Chimney repairs in Bognor Regis

Chimney trouble tends to show twice: as weathering on the stack outside, and as damp or staining somewhere inside the house.

A chimney stack is the most exposed part of a house. It stands clear of the roof, takes weather on every face and relies on brick joints, lead and a mortar cap, each doing a different job at once. When one of them fails, the first sign is usually indoors. On a bungalow in Aldwick or Felpham the stack is often the only brickwork above the roofline, so rain and sea weather work on it from every side. A chimney repair starts by finding which part has let go, because the cure for a cracked cap is nothing like the cure for a failed flashing.

1.1 What you can see from the ground

Stand back in the garden or across the road and look at the stack, with binoculars if you have them. Pointing that has washed out leaves dark gaps between the bricks, and a pot that looks fine from the road can still hide a cracked bed beneath it. Brick faces that are flaking show as pale, rough patches. A pot sitting at an angle, a cracked cap or lead standing proud of the tiles are all worth a photograph. Keep your feet on the ground while you look. The photograph is enough for us to start from, and a stack that leans is better reported than inspected from a ladder.

1.2 What the chimney breast and the loft show

Indoors, a brown stain on the chimney breast, wallpaper lifting or powdery salts on the plaster point to water finding a way down. In the loft, look where the brickwork passes through the roof: dark tide marks, wet timbers round the stack or daylight at the flashing all narrow the search. Damp on a chimney breast is not always a roof fault, so we check from the roof side before anyone opens up a wall. Our guide to a damp chimney breast explains how the causes differ.

1.3 How we inspect a stack

We start in the loft, then go to a ladder or the roof, and photograph the pointing, the flaunching, the pots and the lead from close range. Where the inspection cannot reach something safely, we tell you what it would take to look. The photographs arrive alongside the quote, so you can see what we saw and pass the pictures on to anyone you like. Regular maintenance helps too: a look at the stack after a hard winter costs little, and small faults are cheap to put right before they let water in.

Where the stack meets the roof, lead carries the water round the brickwork and back out over the tiles.

Wherever a chimney meets the roof, lead does the sealing. A flashing is the lead sheet dressed over the tiles at the foot of the stack and tucked into the brickwork above them. Lead is used because it can be bent to shape and moves with the building without splitting, and it is the detail that decides whether a stack stays dry. Arun's conservation guidance describes the chimneys of The Steyne and Aldwick Road terraces as skyline features, so the lead beside them has to look right as well as work.

3.1 Flashings, soakers and the back gutter

A stack has four sides and each is treated differently. At the front, an apron flashing sheds water onto the tiles below. Up each side, stepped flashings follow the slope and work with soakers, small folded pieces of lead laid between the tile courses to guide water out over the top. Behind the stack, on the high side, sits the back gutter, a lead-lined channel that sends rain round the brickwork instead of letting it build up. When the pointing that holds a flashing falls out, the lead lifts. A blocked, split or badly formed back gutter is where damp in the loft often begins.

3.2 Cement fillets and other shortcuts

Some older stacks have a cement fillet, a sloped band of mortar, where lead should be. Cement cracks because the stack and the roof move at different rates, and once it splits, water follows the crack straight in. Replacing a fillet with lead is a common chimney repair. Long runs of flashing are laid in sections with the laps placed where water cannot sit, and the pointing over them is checked again at each visit.

3.3 Choosing the lead code

Each sheet of lead carries a code number, and the higher the number, the thicker the lead. Royston Lead's brochure lists code 4, at 1.80 mm, for soakers, flashings and valleys, and code 5, at 2.24 mm, for flashings and gutters. We choose the code for the position and the size of the piece. A lead flashing repair done properly means wedging the lead into a raked joint and pointing over it, not smearing sealant along the top edge. Mastic can get a leak through a wet week, but it is a holding measure, and it has to come off before the real repair begins.

Patching a small section is sometimes enough. MyJobQuote, last updated 22 September 2026, puts patching chimney leadwork at £150 to £250 and says lead flashing can last for over 80 years, a good reason to renew it properly once it has failed instead of patching it again. A flashing repair that stops at one side of the stack often leaves another side with the same fault, so we check all four. Our guide to chimney flashing shows each piece in turn, and larger jobs are covered on our lead roofing and leadwork page.

Access, how much of the stack has failed and the amount of lead involved move the price more than anything else.

JJ Roofing's published guide range for chimney repairs runs from £300 to £3,000. That is wide because the jobs are: resetting a pot from a ladder is a small visit, while a scaffolded rebuild with new lead and flaunching takes several days. Three things move the price more than any other. The first is access, because a stack on a bungalow ridge can often be reached with ladders, while one on a three-storey terrace needs scaffolding. The second is how much of the stack has failed. The third is the lead, since the length of flashing and the code of the sheet set the cost of the material. Our prices are good and fair for the work the survey turns up.

5.1 What national guides show

MyJobQuote, last updated 22 September 2026, puts patching chimney leadwork at £150 to £250 and a full renewal at £350 to £460 without scaffolding, rising to £700 to £920 with it. Checkatrade, in a table updated October 2026, gives around £750 as the average for repointing a chimney. These are typical UK ranges and not a price for your stack. They do show how much scaffolding changes a total, which is why we tell you at the survey whether your job needs it. A pot replacement or a short length of pointing sits at the lower end of any range, while a stack taken down and rebuilt belongs near the top, with new lead and flaunching as part of it. Cost also follows the number of faults found: a stack with one problem and a stack with four are priced differently even when they look the same from the road.

5.2 Scaffolding, licences and VAT

Checkatrade's scaffolding guide, table last updated October 2026, puts scaffolding for chimney work at around £660 a week and a two-storey semi-detached house at around £875 a month. Under section 169 of the Highways Act 1980, a scaffold that obstructs the highway needs a licence from the highway authority, which takes notice. West Sussex County Council asks for at least 10 working days' notice and charges £266 for one month. Hampshire County Council, which covers Havant and East Hampshire, asks for ten clear working days and charges £211.90 for the first two weeks. In Portsmouth the licence comes from the city council as highway authority. The standard VAT rate is 20 per cent, so ask whether any price you are given includes it, and whether it includes the scaffold.

A quick fix that leaves the lead alone often costs twice: once now and once when the water returns. Where the survey shows a single cracked flaunching, that is the job we price. Where the pointing, the lead and the cap are all failing together, doing them under one scaffold is usually the lower total. Our guide to what a chimney repair costs works through typical jobs side by side, and the written quote you receive covers the whole job.