Removing chimney ideas

[adder1969]

Hi, I have a chimney that runs through the middle of my house. It's part of a block wall on the ground floor then forms it's own brick square section chimney up through the 1st floor and through the loft. Two sides of the chimney are incorporated into stud walls on the 1st floor. It's about 18" square.

Does anyone know if it's easier just to remove the whole thing or to leave the stack in the loft? If I remove the whole thing clearly I'll need to get to the top of it - can this be done from within the loft - i.e. make a hole in the roof, take the chimney top down then make good the roof mostly from inside? (or put a skylight in)

The other option is to remove only two sides of the chimney on the 1st floor so that it still supports some of the weight of the complete chimney above and then have a beam in the loft to support the rest of it. Trouble is I'd have to get a long beam into the loft and I'm not sure that's possible. I guess I could remove the bricks in the loft and have the remaining stack on a platform?

On the ground floor the chimney breast section would be removed leaving the original wall in place.

Any other ideas? Just get someone in to do it?!

My downstairs block wall is made of high density blocks and I'm guessing that the 15" or so protusion of the chimney breast does form any sort of structural bracing.

[Tim Decker]

You could do what the owner of my first house did and just remove the stack all the way throught the house and then support the external stack using a steel section from an old bed! This had worked quite well for many years, but did get picked up on the structural survey.

Alternately do it 'properly':- Get a structural engineer in to calculate the type of beam you will need, at a cost of =A3500+. Then get building regs approval from the local council. =A3200+ ??

I am in a similar quandry myself with my current house. The cost of doing the actual work is relatively low, just doing it within the law is going to add 150% to the cost.

[Weatherlawyer]

chimney that runs through the middle of my house.

Take the chimney down from the top. It is fairly straight forward to remove the bricks. Just try not to kill anyone. Then close the hole with felt and batons then tile it. Following the old batons makes it fairly easy to do.

Check you can find similar tiles first though. It might be worth leaving it open for the few days it will take to do the job.

Then just get into the loft and start pulling the brick or blocks off and passing them down. Don't stack too many in there. You'd be best getting a friend to give you an hand. It's going to be messy though, so plenty of fly sheets. And maybe a spray bottle to lay the dust. Try getting as many out through the roof as is possible

It might be worth taking care with the bricks as they could prove useful one day. But just chuck em out the window if not.

Balancing the chimney on old beds, bicycles and packing crates is downright deadly.

[The Natural Philosopher]

people like you lot will be regarded with the same disdain as those who covered up victorian pine doors with hardboard in the 50's..once the price of oil gets so high its back to burning Catholics. Or probably Muslims - on open fires. ;-)

[Peter Ashby]

Not to mention what will we send the kiddies up when the schools all close for lack of, well anything?

Peter

[adder1969]

chimney that runs through the middle of my house.

What I was wondering was, could I make a hole in the roof by the chimney from the inside to avoid me having to use ladders and/or scaffolding etc.

If I'm throwing the bricks down outside I really need one of those flexible tunnels.

As for the tiles I guess I could use some from the side of the garage that no-one sees (and replace them with others of course)

This is a 1985 house so I'm not really prepared to leave things like this and the pink and avocado bathrooms suites just so that it has period fixtures.

[Andrew Gabriel]

You might find the chimney is bigger than you think when you get up there. When putting an aerial on mine, I found that when I was stood on the roof next to it, it towered over me. It never looked that big from the ground ;-)

When my neighbour took down our shared chimney, he dropped all the bricks down the flue into his kitchen (which was a building site at the time).