Chimney Flashing Repair in Pasadena: Written Report, Licensed Technicians

If you're preparing to sell a home in the Pasadena Foothills, Hastings Ranch, or San Pasqual, there's a good chance your chimney flashing will get called out in the buyer's inspection report. These neighborhoods are full of 1920s-1950s Craftsman and ranch-style homes where the original step flashing was installed with galvanized steel or thin aluminum. After 60-plus years of thermal cycling and exposure to foothill wind-driven rain, that metal corrodes and pulls away from the mortar joints. We regularly find 1/8-inch to 1/4-inch gaps between counter flashing and brick on homes in Hastings Ranch that have never had flashing work done. Those gaps let water travel behind the chimney and into the ceiling framing below.

The timing makes this worse. Pasadena's rain season hits hardest between November and March, and most home sales in these neighborhoods close in spring. That means a seller lists a house in February, the buyer's inspector flags water staining around the chimney, and suddenly the deal stalls over a flashing repair that could have been handled months earlier. In San Pasqual, where many homes sit on sloped lots with chimneys on the downhill side, water pools against the uphill chimney wall without a properly sized cricket. A missing or undersized cricket plus deteriorated step flashing is one of the most common reasons we see escrow repair requests in this part of Pasadena.

We approach every Pasadena flashing repair by first diagnosing the actual leak source. Water damage near a chimney can come from a cracked crown, failed flashing, or both. Our CSIA-certified technicians run a targeted water test to isolate the entry point before recommending any work. For step flashing, we remove the existing metal and install new lead or code-compliant aluminum pieces that interweave with each shingle course. Lead is our default recommendation for Pasadena Foothills homes with heavy tile roofs because it conforms better to irregular surfaces and lasts 50-plus years. Counter flashing gets cut into a fresh mortar reglet and sealed with high-temperature polyurethane caulk rated for the heat cycling a chimney produces.

When we find a missing cricket on chimneys wider than 30 inches, we build and install one per NFPA 211 guidelines. This diverts rainwater around the chimney instead of letting it dam up against the masonry. For homes heading into escrow, we document the repair with before-and-after photos that satisfy a Level 2 inspection report, so the buyer's inspector can sign off without a second visit. If we find masonry damage behind the old flashing, we flag it and can handle the repair in the same appointment. Every flashing job includes a written scope of work you can hand directly to your real estate agent or buyer.