Enlarging a Fireplace

[andrewpreece]

I'm no expert in these things, but the first thing I'd like to find out is where the lintel in the chimney breast is. My lintel ( concrete ) was about 4 feet up, well above the actual fireplace aperture. You will need to determine whether your lintel will actually be able to distribute the load safely with some of the brickwork below it missing. I haven't looked at your url's as they seem to describe he stove, not your chimney breast. Unless I'm wrong, I would have thought we'd be better off with a description of the chimney breast itself. Where's the lintel, how wide is the lintel, is the construction brick, how wide is the breast, how wide do you want the aperture etc.

It is not required, IIRC, that your chimney be lined for a solid fuel stove. There are some minimum requirements for the size of the hearth beneath and in front of the fire etc. You may like to leak test your chimney with a smoke pellet or whatever they sell to convince yourself there are no leas ( I expect you'd find that out pretty quick anyway, even if you didn't test! )

Andy.

[Danny Monaghan]

I currently have a lovely (!) gas, living-ish flame, fire sat in front of the fireplace. The fireplace has never had a fire in it, and the chimmney is not lined although it's perfectly sealed.

I'm wanting to fit a wood burning stove but want to open the fireplace up a bit to allow the new stove to sit inside the fireplace, inglenook style. It's not going to need massive enlargement, roughly 6-8 inches each way.

I've never done any work on fireplaces, so I was wondering if this is a difficult job or not, and what would I liekly encounter?

If it helps, the stove I'm looking at is here:

the ideal installation is option C here:

[andrewpreece]

I think he means that your chimney breast lintel, whereever it is, is probably only 6" wider than the fireplace aperture ( it maybe a little more than 6" wider,but we can't tell, only you can ). Thus if you remove 3"-4" of brickwork either side of the aperture, the lintel is effectively sitting on nothing and may fall out! It is more complicated than that in real life: the lintel may be some way up the chimney breast, not directly above the fireplace aperture. No-one is going to even offer a guess without more info on how the chimney breast is constructed.....

Andy.

[Jim Alexander]

How do you know that?

There probably will be a throat forming lintel immediately above the opening bearing on 6" or less of brick so you open up 6-8" at your peril. Probably the main load bearing lintel is higher up and might survive but its still a serious operation.

Have you considered a smaller stove? The smallest I know is a Stockton 3 which I would expect to fit in a standard opening.

Jim A

[Danny Monaghan]

"Jim Alexander" wrote in news:41dbc550 [e-mail]:

Because we'd be poisoned by now if it wasn't :) I suppose I should have added 'to the best of my knowledge', but it's handling gas fumes right now with no problem.

Does this kind of stove need a throat in the chimney? When you say the lintel in bearing on 6" of brick, how exactly?

Cheers

Danny

[Danny Monaghan]

Danny Monaghan wrote in news:crgtf6$gmi$1 @hermes.shef.ac.uk:

I forgot to say that there is no fire back in the chimney.

[Capitol]

I'd check this out as the stove is wood burning. Most chimney fires occur with wood burning fireplaces.

Regards Capitol