Expert: James Ball - 9/30/2008

Question
my house is about100yrs old ,used to be heated by oil now heated by gas furnace.my chimney runs up tru attic . i have had a problem of a black wet residue leakinging out of bricks of chimney and onto floor is this normal and can it be sealed with another layer of mortor or?? please help

Answer
Hello Kathy, was the chimney cleaned before the change over to gas? do you have a cap on top? is the top of the chimney (crown) in good shape? I would have a local Certified Chimney Sweep (www.csia.org, there you can look up by zip code to find one near you) take a first hand look at what you have they should be able to find out what is going on and how to fix it.
hope this helped
James Ball