Owyhee County Courthouse

The Owyhee County Courthouse out in Murphy has a tall brick chimney standing up off the flat roof, which means it catches weather from every direction and gets no help from anything around it.

Nobody sees a chimney like this one. It is above a flat roof on a public building, so from the ground you could stand under it for twenty years and never know what was going on at the top. These photographs are the point of the trip: eroded and cracked mortar, worst in the corbelled section under the cap, several bricks on the top loose and a few already gone.

On a chimney that tall, over a building the public walks into, loose brick is what you deal with first. Eroded mortar repointed, the loose and fallen brick reset.

I also had the drone out on this one. Still working on my piloting skills. It is a good thing that is not a real airplane, or there could have been casualties.

Tall brick chimney with a corbelled cap on the white flat roof of the Owyhee County Courthouse, Murphy, Idaho — The chimney off the courthouse roof. Cracking runs through the corbelled section up under the cap.

Cracked mortar and loose bricks below the cap of the Owyhee County Courthouse chimney, Murphy, Idaho — Closer in: eroded joints, several loose bricks on the top and a few already gone.

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