Services
The card, heaviest first
01
Full rebuilds above the roofline
Tear-down and rebuild in stock matched to the original — bond, colour and joint profile — with the date stone reset where there was one. Priced from camera footage and a mortar sample, scaffold to smoke test, usually two to three weeks on the calendar.
02
Crown rebuilds — from $690
The crown is the only part of a chimney designed to shed water, and on most gorge houses it has been drinking it for decades. Chipped back to sound masonry, drip edge set, poured new and cured under sheeting so the weather never sees it green.
03
Relines — rigid 316Ti, insulated
Where the camera shows cracked clay beyond saving: insulated stainless dropped a section at a time, terminated, and draw-tested before your first fire. Sized to the appliance — a liner off the shelf is a smoking stove on a schedule.
04
Pointing, plates & caps
Joints ground out and re-pointed in mortar matched to the gorge lime, spalled faces cut out and replaced from reclaim stock, damper plates freed and seated, caps screwed down and never wired. The quiet work that postpones the loud work above it.
Before you pay for a skip
The second-opinion yard
Four demolition quotes in five do not survive a camera scan. The gorge frost heaves crowns and opens joints, but the brick below is usually a century from done — and a rebuild scoped from footage costs a fraction of a tear-down once the skip leaves. Bring us the quote you were given; we will bring the camera that argues with it.
The method
A rebuild, in five passes
The same sequence on every stack, from the scout scan to the smoke test — the only variable is how much of the wall the gorge has claimed.
The scan
Level 2 camera down every foot, roof and firebox photographed, mortar sampled and dated. The rebuild is scoped from the footage, line by line, before a scaffold goes up.
The scaffold
Runners on the flowerbeds, a tied and sheeted tower, neighbours’ cars warned. Masonry over a gorge street is logistics as much as trowel-work, and the logistics are in the quote.
The down
Only what the footage condemned comes off — often the top metre and the crown, nothing below. Every salvageable original brick is cleaned, palletized and built back in.
The build
Reclaimed stock where the originals ran short, bond and joint profile matched, date stone reset. From the street the aim is that you cannot find our work; only the weather can, and it loses.
The test
Liner terminated if the scan called for one, crown poured with its drip edge, cap screwed, smoke pencil and manometer out, and the readings written on the handover sheet.
Coho Bluff & the Redwater gorge, 2025 — 2026
Roof level, gorge-wide
Six stacks from the season, photographed off the scaffold before it came down. The aim in every one is that the street cannot spot which metre is ours.
The insurance wanted the whole stack down after the frost heave — five figures and a skip on the pavement for a month. Gritstone scanned it, found the damage stopped a metre below the top, rebuilt that metre in matched stock and poured the crown new with the date stone reset. The adjuster signed off on their photographs. A fifth of the demolition quote, and the street kept its skyline.
Their footage showed a flue with a decade left in it under two cracked tiles at the thimble. Tiles out, insulated stainless through that run only, matched pointing above the roofline — a third of the full-reline quote from the outfit before them, and it draws like a train.
Two masons and a sweep, and the same three people who quoted did the work. The damper plate they re-seated has done more for the room than the new stove did. Runners everywhere, scaffold tied and sheeted, and the flowerbeds survived us.
Before the scaffold
Gorge questions
The five the yard phone answers every thaw. Anything stranger, bring the photographs and the quote you were given to the yard on a Saturday.
Rebuild or reline — how does the yard decide?
The camera decides, and you watch it. Sound clay gets swept and pointed and left alone; localized cracks get a partial stainless run through the damaged section; masonry the freeze-thaw has genuinely won gets the rebuild. On the gorge that last case is rarer than the tear-down quotes going around suggest.
Can you match hundred-year-old brick?
That is half the yard: a reclaim wall built over decades, a band saw for dressings, and lime bins graded to the mortar a given decade used. From the street the aim is that you cannot find our patches — only the weather can, and it loses.
How long is the scaffold up?
A crown-and-point runs days, not weeks — up and down inside the week in fair weather. Full rebuilds above the roofline run two to three. The schedule is written into the quote with the weather clause: the date moves, the number does not.
Can you pour crowns in winter?
Down to freezing, with thermal blankets and a heated mix — the gorge does not wait for spring and neither does the frost damage. Below that the pour moves and the quote holds; a crown rushed into a hard frost is a crown we would be re-pouring.
What is a Level 3 opening?
The NFPA 211 step where masonry comes off to reach damage no camera can see behind — scoped strictly from what the Level 2 footage measured, reinstated to match, and photographed at every stage. It is rarer than the trade makes it sound, and we treat it that way.
Storm or frost damage on the stack? The yard line runs late in bad weather · (555) 069-3391 · yard@gritstonemasonry.example
Ask the yard
Tell us the street, the era, and what the last firm said the stack needed — old reports and photographs welcome, we read them all. Every quote starts from a Level 2 scan, so the price is for the chimney you actually have. yard@gritstonemasonry.example