It’s that time of the year again. The Christmas Tree seller is just starting to do a brisk trade, and you regularly see cars where the tree has been strapped to the roof, or crammed into the back of the car with the top sticking out of one of the side windows. People are starting to think about present buying. Children also start to wonder about how and whether Father Christmas will be able to deliver presents down the chimney.

Fireplaces and chimney flues are carefully designed, they are not created by just banging a hole in the wall and stuffing a pipe up through the roof. The fire opening needs to be carefully sculpted to both stop the smoke and fumes from escaping into the room, then persuading it to rush up the flue. The flue also needs to be constructed to speed the passage of smoke out to the top, whilst stopping any rain from dropping onto the fire yet preventing the dreaded ‘down draught’.

Many chimneys, particularly the ones dating back to Edwardian and Victorian times tend to be constructed of very ornate brickwork, demonstrating both the skill of the builder and the architect, who uses the style to make a statement about the owners wealth. The problem is that with acid rain, and the ravages of time, many of these chimneys are reaching the point when they need to be maintained.

We recently were called out to do a survey of a brick chimney and roof structure, where the owner wanted to ascertain the condition of the structure before planning maintenance work. We were able to fly a drone over the roof, and take detailed photographs of the structure without having to erect a scaffold. The detail of the photographs is mind blowing, we can zoom into the building with a lens that can zoom in by a 34 times multiplication. That is, we can blow a normal sized photograph up to about 5 meters square, without loss of clarity.

In this case, we were able to identify a number of hair line cracks in the chimney which will need to be stitched using helical spiro ties, to restore structural integrity. The owner was then able to plan the repair works, and the builder knew exactly what he had to do before even climbing onto the scaffold. The cost of the drone survey is much cheaper than erecting a scaffold or hiring a cherry picker, and the equipment doesn’t have to sit on site for weeks, waiting for the builder to turn up.

So what about our hoped for visitor on Christmas morning? Well hopefully once the planed work was completed, he should be able to use the chimney without disturbing the brickwork, and all will be well again for another year.