Having opened-up a fireplace that's been closed since the 60s I need to get the build-up of tar off the bricks before the wood burner goes in. I've tried a blowlamp, wire brush and scraper but it's not clearing it particularly well. Suggestions?
Thinners. But the brickwork will not come up spotless,the tar will have got right in. PVA to seal it after cleaning and then paint is the only solution.
In message , snipped-for-privacy@nomail.com writes
Can you light an ordinary open fire in there first? That should burn off the old tar.
I don't think you will ever realistically get them clean enough to be on show. A cement render over the old fireplace brickwork was my solution.
You might be able to get the worst off with a sacrificial wood chisel but it will take forever to do and be hard to do neatly.
No, that point has passed. The blowlamp didn't help, and the tar presumably appeared from 25 years of previous fires.
Somebody else is fitting the stove today so I'll need it work around it at my "leisure", whatever that is ;-)
Too late to try a heavy duty pressure washing then, it seems to have got a lot of city buildings much cleaner since decades of soot from coal fires has been washed off. Buildings in London and other cities just looked black and depressing back in the 1960's. Quite messy to do though.
G.Harman
Pprobably sand or dry-ice blasting ...
Could well be Or maybe plastic bead abrasive of some kind in later years as techniques were refined. A nephew cleaned some old cast iron radiators the other day with a "domestic" sandblaster the other day and apart from having to keep stopping to let the fairly large compressure catch up the results weren't that bad. Very messy though and would require a lot of protective sheeting with PPE being worn and it sounds like the OP is beyond that stage even if the hire cost would be worthwhile.
G.Harman
Yes, sandblasting the OP wouldn't help
NT
I agree!!!
Pressure washing a fireplace inside a house wouldn't help very much either!
We've delayed the final fitting of the stove so I can have another go at the bricks and then decide whether to persevere with them or give in and cover them with fire board.
Some feedback in case it helps someone. What I actually did was persevere with the blowlamp to cook the tar until it bubbled and could be easily scraped off. Some of the reside burnt and what was left could be partly scrubbed off with a lot of water and a scrubbing brush. There are still many black-stained bricks but it's a more acceptable type of staining, whatever that means, than what was there at the start. It's only a small fireplace but I probably spent 5-6 hours on it. The brick acid did what it it was supposed to do with the mortar but, despite suggestions to the contrary, did not seem to help the tar/stain removal.
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