St. Catharines conditions that change how chimney repointing & brick repair is done
If you mapped our St. Catharines service calls on a calendar, you would see the same shape every year: the problems are created in February and paid for in November.
Wind loading off Lake Ontario pushes driving rain against the south and west faces of a house, which is why water entry so often shows up on one side of a St. Catharines home and nowhere else.
The swing between a January cold snap and a February thaw can move a masonry assembly enough to open joints that looked sound in the fall.
Across Rykert, Power Glen, Glendale, Bunting and Western Hill, the housing stock changes street by street, and the correct method changes with it. A century home with a soft-brick stack does not get the same treatment as a 2010 build with a factory-built vent — using one method on both is how systems get damaged.
If you live anywhere near the Welland Canal, the practical takeaway is that a chimney repointing & brick repair visit should start with an assessment, not a tool. Any crew that begins work before telling you what they found is guessing on your behalf.