The short answer
You can legally repoint your own chimney, but we would not advise it. The stack stands above the ridge, so you would be working at roof height on a ladder or a roof with little to hold. A careless rake-out can also loosen bricks and damage them. What you can do safely is inspect the stack from the ground, from a neighbour's view or from the loft, and note what you find.
Why the height is the real problem
On a wall at head height, repointing is a patient weekend job. A chimney is another matter. The work faces start well above the eaves, so the first obstacle is getting there. A ladder reaching the gutter does not reach the stack, and a crawling board or ladder hung from the ridge leaves you on a slope that is often slippery with moss, with loose tiles underfoot and a drop on one side.
Once there, you are working with both hands: a hammer and chisel, or a plugging tool, and a hawk of mortar. That leaves nothing to hold on with. The top courses, where the pointing has usually failed, are also the courses with the least masonry above them, so a slip while raking out is likely to bring bricks with you. We use scaffold for this reason, and so should anyone who is serious about doing the job. A boarded scaffold platform at the stack is where the work becomes safe, and it is also what makes up a good part of a roofer's price.
Hiring a tower for a day sounds like the answer, but erecting one on a sloping pitch without a firm base is its own risk, and the tower still has to reach above the ridge. Our page on scaffolding for chimney work explains what a proper platform involves.
What goes wrong when pointing is done badly
Even with safe access, the job is easy to get wrong. Raking out means cutting old mortar back to a depth, commonly taken as about twice the joint width, without chipping the edges of the bricks or stones. A cold chisel in unpractised hands will do both. Rake out too shallow and the new mortar sits on the surface and falls away. Rake too deep or too hard and the stack, which may only be held up by its own weight, loosens.
The mortar choice matters more than most owners realise. Older stacks in Stroud district were built with lime mortar, which is softer and lets moisture out through the joints. A hard cement mix pressed into soft brick or stone makes the joint stronger than the masonry around it, and the water that cannot leave by the joints leaves through the brick faces instead, which then flake. That is a repair that makes the next repair necessary. Our guide to chimney repointing in Stroud sets out how the trade method works and why mortar choice follows the age and type of the masonry.
There is a further risk that owners rarely see: pointing the stack and leaving the flaunching, the sloping mortar around the pots, or the lead flashing at the base unchecked. The stack then looks repaired while water still gets in lower down.
What you can safely check yourself
Plenty can be learned from the pavement. Stand well back, in the garden or across the road, and study the stack in good light, using binoculars or a phone's zoom. Look for these signs:
- Mortar missing between courses, or a pale, powdery line where joints have eroded.
- A lean in the stack, or pots that no longer sit straight.
- Bricks with the face flaking away, or stone showing open bedding joints.
- Cracks in the sloping mortar around the pots.
- Lead at the foot of the stack that has lifted or gapped.
Then go into the loft, if there is one, and look at the chimney breast with a torch. Damp patches, white salt marks or a stain on the timbers beside the breast suggest water is coming down inside the stack. Nothing needs touching for any of this, and a dated set of photos is exactly what a roofer will want to see. If the stack is leaning rather than just worn, stop there: our guide to leaning chimney stacks covers why it needs a professional look soon.
What a roofer's price covers
A typical UK figure for repointing a chimney averages about £750, with a range of £500 to £2,000 (MyBuilder, 2026). By house type, MyBuilder puts a bungalow at £200 to £700 and a semi with a central stack at £900 to £1,500. Those numbers can look steep against a bag of mortar, but they include the access, the raking out, the new mortar, and clearing the debris.
Where the pointing is only one part of the problem, the sums grow. A flashing repair is typically £250 to £1,200 and a full stack rebuild £2,000 to £10,000 or more (both MyBuilder, 2026). Doing the pointing yourself and discovering a rotten flaunching or a failed flashing afterwards can leave you paying for scaffold twice. That is the more common route to a bigger bill than a roofer's first quote.
Our survey records the whole stack with photographs, and the quote afterwards covers scaffold, raking out, mortar, leadwork and waste. You decide which parts to have done. If the stack is a stone one, our answer on rendering a chimney is worth reading before anyone suggests covering it.
When to ask for help
If any bricks are loose, if you can see daylight through a joint, or if the stack leans, treat it as a job for a professional and keep people away from the base. Falling masonry can land on a path or a neighbour's roof.
A dish or aerial strapped to the stack adds weight and leverage exactly where you would be working, which is another reason to leave the access to someone set up for it; our answer on aerials fixed to chimneys covers that. For anything wider, start from our chimney repairs page, send photos of what you can see, and we will go through the findings and the likely work.