Chimney vent

We've recently moved into a 120 year old house and there are a few mysteries that I would still like to get to the bottom of.

We have a chimney block that has 6 individual chimneys in it, which is shared with next door. In our bedroom (actually on the ground floor) there's an airbrick into a chimney that I thought was disused. That is until our neighbour's boiler started up and I realise that there is a flue running up the chimney for next door's boiler.

This wakes us up when it starts up at 5am! I've temporarily taped some plywood over the vent and it makes a big difference to the noise. Do you think it's a bad idea to permanently block up this vent? I assume the chimney is sealed at the top, allowing only the boiler flue to exit. I think this is the only vent into the chimney, and the only other place it's possible to vent it would be in the lounge, which is also undesirable.

Any advice gratefully received.

Thanks, Dave.

Reply to
Swift Half
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Its normal to vent unused chinmeys top & bottom. I'd be suspisious that sombody has broken the brickwork beween 2 of the vents.

Rick

Reply to
Rick

I would venture to suggest that this is not acceptable. What would happen, for instance, should you decide to install a fire?

Reply to
Chris Bacon

What I would expect to find is 6 vents up one chinmey brest. each vent should be sealed from each of the others, else you'd get smoke come out upstaris when you light a fire downstairs. I would also expect to find that the boiler has a metal flue liner.

I suspect that this is not what you will find in this case.

Rick

Reply to
Rick

I would be very entertained to find out what the OP has got here!

Reply to
Chris Bacon

OK. Let me explain a little more.....

The house was once a large Victorian manor house that has been converted into 4 houses. The chimney breast in question is the one that used to service the old kitchen, and it's shared between us & next door. It has 6 vents, all sealed from each other. Only 4 of these are in use (one for our boiler, one for next door's, one for our woodburner and one for next door's). The boilers are both in the same 'boiler room' which is adjacent to our bedroom.

At one time the 2 boiler flues used to go into the same chimney vent but a few years ago, before we moved in, someone spotted this and decided it was a bad idea so they moved next door's into a vacant vent.

I'm pretty sure that a chimney liner was installed at this time - you can see it through the airbrick.

I assume that the airbrick is still necessary though to avoid the build up of moisture.

Reply to
Swift Half

Lets guess, the spare vent, is the one in your bedroom ? of is the vent in your bedroom open to the boiler room somehow ?

Rick

Reply to
Rick

The vent in the bedroom has next door's boiler's flue running up it. This is the right-most vent as you look from our house. The middle one has our boiler's flue and the left-most one has our woodburner. Our boiler's flue enters the chimney higher up than next door's, so I assume next door's flue runs horizontally through the middle vent to get to the right-most one. I can only assume they've fixed up the brickwork to keep the vents separated!

Reply to
Swift Half

Now you know what the problem is, how do you fix it ?

I would think that next door should have their flue up their own vent, unless there is an agreement in the deeds of the house.

Now this is IMHO a problem the vendor should have discolsed, and I would imagine that a chat with your solicitor would be in order. In any case the survey IMHO should have found this.

Rick

Reply to
Rick

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