Mountain Lakes has a kind of chimney that most New Jersey towns do not: the fieldstone stack rising out of a stucco house. AM Chimney Sweep cleans, inspects and repairs chimneys in Mountain Lakes, and stone calls for a different approach than brick at almost every step.
The Hapgood houses
The Borough’s own history records that developer Herbert J. Hapgood had built about 600 stucco houses here by 1923, drawing on the Craftsman style, with fieldstone used for the chimneys, walls and foundations. The Borough counts 454 of those original houses still standing and describes them as one of the largest collections of Craftsman-influenced houses in the country. Every one of those stone chimneys is now roughly a century old.
Source: Borough of Mountain Lakes, “Our History.”
How a stone chimney differs from brick
Far more mortar is exposed
Bricks are uniform and sit on thin, even joints. Fieldstone is irregular, so the joints are wide and wander in every direction. A stone chimney can have several times the exposed mortar of a brick one, and mortar is the part that weathers.
Water goes to the joints
Dense stone absorbs very little. Rain that would soak into brick runs down the face of the stone and into the joint below it. When a stone chimney leaks, the joints are nearly always the path.
The stones themselves rarely fail
That is the good news. With sound joints, a fieldstone chimney will outlast most brick. The work is almost entirely about mortar.
What to look for
- Joints that have receded, leaving stones standing proud with shadowed gaps around them
- A stone that has worked loose or shifted, most often near the top
- Plants rooted in the joints
- A crack in the stucco where the wall meets the chimney
- Water stains inside on the chimney breast or around the fireplace
- Earlier repairs in a different color that were smeared over the stone faces
Repointing stone properly
Good stone repointing is slow work. The failed mortar is raked out by hand to a solid depth around each stone. New mortar should suit hundred-year-old masonry, which means it should not be harder than the material it sits against, and it should match the original in color and in the way the joint is finished. It is packed into the joint and kept off the face of the stone. Loose stones are reset in their original positions, not replaced with something from a garden center.
This is the same masonry and repointing discipline we apply to old brick, adapted to stone.
The stucco side of the house
Where a stone chimney passes through or stands against a stucco wall, the two materials move differently, and the joint between them cracks. Left open, it lets water in behind the stucco. Some chimneys in town are stuccoed brick instead of stone, and their problem is different again: stucco that has cracked or come loose from the brick beneath. We repair both.
Inside a century-old flue
Fireplaces in these houses are often generous in size, with flues to match. A flue of this age may be lined with clay tile or not lined at all, and the only way to know is a camera inspection. If the tiles are sound but the joints have opened, in-place flue repair may be possible. If not, the flue needs a liner.
At the top
Stone chimneys were commonly finished with a mortar wash or a stone slab. Either can crack. A sound crown and a cap protect all the joint work below.
Schedule a visit in Mountain Lakes
Call (862) 225-6529 or contact us online. We will show you photos of the joints, the top and the flue before recommending anything. For related work, see our crown, flashing and stucco repairs in Tinton Falls and the other projects in Our Work. Annual cleaning is available as well.