Chimney Flashing Repair in Pasadena: Written Report in Plain Language

A homeowner on a tree-lined block along the Arroyo Seco corridor called us last November after noticing a brown water stain spreading across the plaster above her living room fireplace. The house was a 1923 Craftsman bungalow with a clinker brick chimney and the original galvanized step flashing, long since corroded. She'd already had two roofers look at it. One said the crown was cracked. The other quoted her for a full roof overlay. Neither one actually got on the roof with a hose to isolate where the water was entering. She was worried about damage behind the walls and didn't want to tear into historic plaster unless she had to.

We get calls like this from Old Pasadena and the surrounding neighborhoods every fall, right before the first real rain. Pasadena's Craftsman-era homes were built with flashing details that matched the roofing materials of the time, usually tar-set galvanized metal tucked under wood shingles. A hundred years later, those galvanized pieces are paper-thin, the tar has dried out, and the counter flashing mortared into the chimney's brick joints has pulled loose. The homeowner's instinct is usually right: something is leaking. But the fix depends entirely on whether the failure is at the step flashing along the roof slope, the counter flashing embedded in the masonry, or both. That distinction matters, because the wrong repair wastes money and leaves the leak active.

For the Arroyo Seco bungalow, we ran a controlled water test starting at the highest flashing point and working down. Within minutes we confirmed the leak at the uphill side of the chimney where a cricket should have been installed but never was. Water pooled against the brick, worked under the degraded counter flashing, and ran down the interior wall. The step flashing on the left rake was also compromised, with three pieces corroded through. Our repair followed NFPA 211 inspection standards and NRCA flashing guidelines: we fabricated new lead step flashing pieces woven into the existing roof tiles, installed a proper cricket with soldered seams to direct water around the chimney, and re-cut the mortar joints to seat new counter flashing into the masonry. Lead was the right call here because it conforms to irregular clinker brick surfaces far better than rigid aluminum.

Homes in San Marino and throughout Pasadena's historic neighborhoods share this same construction era and the same vulnerability. Southern California's dry summers hide flashing failures for months. Then a January storm drops two inches in a few hours and the damage shows up all at once. We recommend having your chimney flashing inspected before rain season, ideally by October. If you've noticed staining, musty smells near the firebox, or efflorescence on the brick above your roofline, those are signs the flashing or the masonry joints behind it have already failed. A targeted repair now protects the plaster, the framing, and the historic character of your home.