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Watched a 1970s chimney go from leaning 3 inches to dead straight in 2 days thanks to helical piers
So my neighbor's chimney on his 1974 ranch in Aurora was leaning bad, like 3 inches out of plumb at the cap. You could see daylight between the flashing and the brick. He got three quotes, and two of them wanted to tear it down to the roofline and rebuild, one was $11,800 and the other was $13,500. Third guy was a foundation contractor who said he'd rather stabilize it with helical piers and re-point it. Cost $6,400. They dug down alongside the footing, screwed in four galvanized piers, jacked the whole thing back to plumb over about 6 hours, and then the mason spent the next day cutting out and re-pointing the cracked joints on the north face. I went over there Sunday morning and ran a 4 ft level on it and it was dead nuts. The brick courses line up with the fascia again. He said the foundation guy told him the original footing was only about 14 inches deep and sitting on expansive clay that had been moving every wet season since the house was built. Bothers me now because I've probably walked past 50 chimneys like that and never really thought about the footing under them. Any of you ever get pulled into chimney work or do you hand it off to a foundation guy every time?
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