Roof repair and chimney flashing in Silver Spring (20910)

A lot of houses in Woodside Park, Seven Oaks-Evanswood and East Silver Spring were built between the 1920s and the 1950s with full brick chimneys, many serving an old oil or coal furnace that was later swapped for gas or a heat pump. The chimney often sits unused, the crown cracks, and the mortar joints that hold the counterflashing turn to sand.

When we reflash a chimney, we remove the old step and counterflashing, grind a fresh reglet into sound mortar, and install new step flashing woven in with each shingle course. A cricket goes behind any chimney wider than about 30 inches, because that's where water stacks up. Details are on our chimney flashing repair page.

• Cracked mortar crown letting water into the flue
• Counterflashing caulked to the brick face instead of set in a joint
• No cricket behind a wide chimney on the uphill side
• Missing cap on an abandoned flue

East Silver Spring has 1920s and 1930s bungalows, foursquares and small colonials, including a few Sears kit homes, on narrow lots off Sligo Avenue. Woodside Park and North Woodside run larger: center-hall colonials and Tudors on curving streets with old oaks. Closer to Georgia Avenue and Colesville Road, 1940s Cape Cods fill the gaps.

Further out, Four Corners, Indian Spring and Kemp Mill bring 1950s and 1960s ramblers and split-levels with shallow pitches. Downtown, the condo and apartment buildings near the Silver Spring Metro and Ellsworth Drive sit under low-slope membranes, a different kind of job we handle through our condo and multifamily roofing work.

Sligo Creek Park cuts right through these neighborhoods, and the oaks, beeches and tulip poplars along it shed from May to December. Gutters overflow, water runs behind the fascia, and the bottom courses of shingles rot from beneath. On north-facing slopes, moss and algae streak the shingles within a few years.

We clean and reseal existing gutters where they are sound, but many older houses here have undersized 4-inch or 5-inch runs that can't handle a summer downpour. Upsizing to 6-inch with oversize downspouts, plus gutter guards rated for oak leaves, cuts down on ladder trips every fall.

Fascia boards behind those overflowing gutters are often soft by the time we see them. We cut out the rotted lengths, replace them with primed lumber or PVC trim, and wrap them in aluminum coil so the next gutter has something solid to hang from.

Streets in East Silver Spring and around Fenton Village are narrow and lined with parked cars, so a full-size dumpster isn't always practical. We bring a dump trailer we can move at the end of each day, lay plywood over flower beds, and hang tarps down the walls to catch nails. Where a driveway is shared, we talk with the neighbor before the trailer goes in.

The county permit office handles most reroofs here, since Silver Spring isn't an incorporated city. Owners just across the line deal with different rules, which we explain on the Takoma Park page.