I have not yet brought in the local "experts" since I want your opinions first, and your caveats from your own experience.

Here's the story.

Santa apparently was too big for my chimney since it has pulled away from the house - at the top by about 1-2" and at the base by maybe a 1/16th of an inch.

The chimney is about 20-25' tall, and vents my oil burner. It is of brick, but the last four courses are cinderblock. It has obviously had several patch jobs between the house and the chimney with various compounds before I bought the house in 2003. The mastic and other glop they used is not only where the chimney joins the house, but here and there in the chimney itself. It appears to be set on a poor foundation, and in looking at chimneys all across my little city, it appears some poorly trained bricklayer did a whole raft of them, about 1 out of 8 seems to have a lean across town.

The section of the house where it is located was built in the 1950's and I assume that is the age of the original chimney. The oil burner is from sometime in the mid to late 90's so it is 10-15 years old and is operating well. I have it serviced yearly.

So, the questions are what range of expense am I looking at (I am retired on a fixed income) and is a chimney required in Massachusetts for an oil burner?

If the repair job becomes a replacement job I would likely think about getting rid of the chimney and just install one of the new super-efficient oil burners that vents directly outdoors. That would cost the same as rebuilding the chimney from what I can tell. And over time, the cost would be recouped with savings in heating oil. Or perhaps I should consider natural gas. There is a line in front of the house and the gas company subsidizes new customers from mailings I have received.

I suppose my real question is how would you proceed. The house is paid for, but living on a fixed income coming up with money for this will be a real challenge. I am hoping to find some sort of subsidy or grant program that covers people in my situation.

As you can see it is very complicated, and I am not sure what to focus on first.