Roofers in Llanelli, Carmarthenshire
Chimney repairs in Llanelli: a stack that stands up to the wind
The chimney is the most exposed thing on your roof. If mortar is dropping, a pot is leaning or the wall beside the breast is damp, describe it and a local roofer will call you back.
- Brick and stone stacks raked out and repointed
- Lead flashing and back gutters renewed
- Pots re-bedded, cowls and caps fitted to unused flues
- Stacks rebuilt, lowered or removed where they are past saving
Up there on its own, in every gale
A chimney stack pokes up above the ridge with nothing to shelter it. Rain hits it from all four sides. Frost gets into wet mortar and pushes it out, grain by grain.
From the street you might spot sandy streaks down the brickwork, a green tuft growing from a joint, or a pot that sits a few degrees off upright. Indoors there may be a damp patch on the chimney breast upstairs, or a brown mark where the breast meets the ceiling.
It is easy to shrug off. Then a winter storm takes the top course of bricks, or the pot, and drops it through the slates.
From damp patch to a price, in three moves
Describe what you can see
Write down what you have noticed from the ground or from indoors: a slate in the gutter, a stain on a ceiling, water running down the wall behind a downpipe. Add your name, a phone number and the part of Llanelli you are in.
A roofer from your side of town rings
Your phone goes at the hour you asked for. Expect a few plain questions about the house and the roof, and for most jobs a time to come round and have a proper look.
You get a figure and think it over
Have the price put in writing, with a line on what it covers. Take as long as you like over it. If it does not suit you, say so and that is the end of it.
The four chimney jobs
Raking out and repointing
The old mortar is raked out to a set depth and the joints are filled again. Checkatrade's chimney guide prices raking out at about £35 a square metre, repointing brick at about £55 and repointing stone at about £80. On a soft old brick stack a lime-based mortar is often the better match, so ask what will be used.
Leadwork
Lead flashing seals the join between stack and roof. It is tucked into a mortar joint at the top and dressed over the slates below. When the wedge of mortar holding it falls out, the lead flaps and water runs straight down behind it. Sometimes re-fixing is enough. Split or thin lead is replaced.
Pots, caps and the top of the stack
Pots sit in a bed of mortar called flaunching. When that cracks, the pot can rock and rain soaks into the top of the stack. New flaunching cures both. A flue that is no longer used can be fitted with a vented cap, which keeps rain and birds out while still letting air through.
Rebuild or take down
If the bricks themselves have crumbled or the stack leans, it is rebuilt from sound brickwork up, or lowered. The same guide puts removing a stack at £260 to £340 for each metre of height.
Chimney repair costs from a published guide
Choose the chimney job. The figures are UK guide ranges from one published source.
Every figure here is a typical UK guide price read from the published guide named with it. Not one is a quote for your roof. What your own job comes to depends on the size and height of the roof, how easy it is to reach, the materials and what turns up once the old covering is lifted. Most of the guides give their prices before VAT.
The whole price list in one table
| Job | UK guide price |
|---|---|
| Chimney repointingRepointing one chimney stack. The low figure is a small chimney on a low roof. The high figure is a chimney in the middle of a semi-detached house, with scaffolding over the ridge. The guide's average is £750. | £300 to £1,000typical about £750 |
| Chimney stack rebuild: Part of the stackA partial rebuild of a chimney stack. | £600 to £1,000 |
| Chimney stack rebuild: Everything above the roofFully rebuilding the part of the chimney stack that stands above the roofline. | £1,000 to £3,500 |
Every figure here is a typical UK guide price read from the published guide named with it. Not one is a quote for your roof. What your own job comes to depends on the size and height of the roof, how easy it is to reach, the materials and what turns up once the old covering is lifted. Most of the guides give their prices before VAT.
The published guides these prices were read from
Why access decides the price
Most of the bill for a chimney is for getting to it safely. The Checkatrade guide lists a scaffold tower at about £300 and gives £800 for repointing a medium chimney on the gable end of a semi with scaffolding. A stack in the middle of the roof, with scaffolding carried over the ridge, comes to about £1,000.
So it pays to have everything up there done in one visit. With the scaffold in place, the pots, the lead, the pointing and any loose ridge tiles near the stack can all be seen to for one lot of access.
Chimneys on Llanelli's terraces
Brick stacks are part of the look of the town's older streets. Cadw's listing of a late Victorian terrace on New Road picks out its brick stacks alongside the slate roofs.
On a terrace the stack usually sits on the party wall and serves both houses. That makes it a shared chimney, and a repair is best agreed, and paid for, with next door. One scaffold and one roofer for the whole stack costs each side less than two separate jobs.
Two rules to know. Inside a conservation area, Carmarthenshire County Council says planning permission is required to demolish a chimney. And taking down a shared stack, or removing the breast below it, affects a wall you share, so get proper advice before any bricks come out.
Damp near a chimney can also come from the roof round it. If you are not sure which, describe what you see on the roof repairs page and let the roofer work it out.
Roofing work in Llanelli
- Roof and leak repairsLeaks traced, slates and ridges re-fixed, lead put right.
- Emergency rooferRain coming in or roof damage after a gale.
- Slate roofingSlates replaced, slopes re-laid, old slate reused where sound.
- Flat roofsExtensions, garages and dormers patched or re-covered.
- Guttering, fascias and soffitsGutters cleared and replaced, roofline boards renewed.
- New roofsFull re-roofs in slate or tile, with the Welsh rules explained.
Llanelli and the places round it
Roofing help for the whole town, the villages on its edge and the coast as far as Burry Port.
- Town centre, Bigyn and Tyisha
- New Dock, Morfa and Machynys
- Sandy and Stradey
- Felinfoel
- Swiss Valley
- Dafen
- Pemberton and Trostre
- Llwynhendy and Bynea
- Pwll
- Burry Port and Pembrey
- Llangennech
- Trimsaran
- Kidwelly
- Loughor
Plain facts before you fill it in
- No bill for asking. There is no fee for sending the form and no fee for the call. Turning a price down costs nothing either.
- The form is brief. Your name, a number, your area and what is wrong. The number of your house and your email address are not asked for.
- The prices are not ours. Each figure on these pages was read from a published UK cost guide, and the guide is named and linked next to it. Use them to get your bearings. A real price needs someone to look at your own roof.
- Your details go no further than the job. They are used so a roofer can ring you about your roof. Nobody buys them, and you will not end up on a marketing list.
Common questions
How do I know if my chimney needs repointing?
Look for gaps or shadows in the joints, sandy grit in the gutter or on the path below, plants growing from the brickwork and damp on the chimney breast indoors. Binoculars, or the zoom on a phone camera, show a lot from the pavement.
We never light a fire. Can the chimney just be left?
An unused chimney still stands in the weather and still needs sound mortar and lead. If it is in fair order, a vented cap on the pot and a check every few years is enough. If it is in poor order, lowering or removing it can cost less over time than repeated repairs.
Does a chimney repair need scaffolding?
Usually some form of safe platform is needed, because the work is at the highest point of the roof and takes time. On a low roof a tower may do. On a two-storey terrace it is normally scaffolding, sometimes over the ridge.
Loose bricks above your own back door
A stack with open joints takes in water every time it rains, and a frost widens every gap. What falls from a chimney falls a long way, onto a roof, a yard or a pavement. Repointing is a modest job. Rebuilding after a collapse is not.
Say what you can see from the ground and which part of Llanelli you are in. Quotes cost nothing.