Neighbours wood burner

Survivor

Hi.
My (lovely) neighbour had a wood burner installed a couple of months ago and the smell in my house, when its alight, is awful.
Its a terraced property and her chimney runs through my living room-where it hardly smells at all-then up through the front bedroom, where the smell is really strong. The smell also permetates throughout the rest of the house, even when the windows are shut.
I keep running round my house in panic, thinking i'm on fire!:o

Is it normal to have a strong burning smell coming through the walls?
The houses seem quite good otherwise e'g i hear very little noise etc through the joining walls.

Thanks in advance for any help/advice

kaya

i have a similar problem with my neighbours wood burner, i actually had smoke coming down the chimney once, turned out that it was my kitchen hood extractor fan being over efficient and sucking air down my chimney, opening the kitchen window when i use the extract has sorted the problem, maybe your neighbours flue is blocked?, smoke should not be able to get from there chimney stack to yours, and a wood burner should have a flue fitted anyway so the chimney leaking would be irrelevant

debbie42

Survivor wrote: »

Is it normal to have a strong burning smell coming through the walls?

Definitely not! Have you mentioned it to your neighbour, and checked whether the flue was lined?

Survivor

Hi
thanks for your replies.
I've not mentioned it to the neigbour yet as i wasn't sure whether it was a problem, but it seems it is.

thebaldwindowfitter

definatly needs a liner especially on a shared chimney

savemoney

I suspect your neighbour and your chimney are leaking this should be avoided if they had a chimney lining

paddy's_mum

This has the easy capacity to become a life threatening situation! Please, please go round to your neighbour NOW and either speak to them or drop a note in and warn them about what is happening. They are putting your lives at risk - ever heard of poisonous fumes, carbon monoxide, chimney fires ... ?

It sounds as though they have installed the stove without any sensible or qualified input whatever. At the very least, they should have had the chimney swept and either an engineer's certificate or building regulations inspection and certification.

It is quite likely that the bricks of the chimney are degraded, allowing the passage of toxic smoke between the two properties. Properly tested by qualified people, this should not have a chance of happening.

Please don't just take our or my word for it. Give your local authority's evironmental health department a ring and seek their advice. They will confirm the situation. No names need be given if you want to avoid upsetting the neighbour but EH will give you advice.

Then alert the neighbour while you are still alive and still able to do so! Hope it gets sorted out as soon as possible.

savemoney

I agree with Paddy you could quite easily be very ill or die from carbon monoxide. I would go round and tell then straight away not to use the wood burner until its been tested

If it was installed correctly by a HETAS engineer they would have had a test or advised them to have a chimney liner before installation

Mojisola

Also buy a carbon monoxide detector asap!

withabix

You should always install a flue liner if you are fitting a wood burning stove - otherwise there is a serious risk of chimney fires:

Quote from a website:

With a stove, 80% of the heat goes into the room, with an open fire 80% of the heat goes up the chimney and this means that the smoke from a stove is great deal cooler than from a fireplace. The result of this is that a stove will usually never manage to bring a masonry chimney up to operating temerature. This can mean that the stove will never draw properly, and the cooling smoke will condense, causing excess soot and, more dangerously, tar deposits. Tar deposits are not removed by a sweeps brush and cause chimney fires and you may get black tarry condensate leaking out through the bottom and sometimes even through the mortar joints of the chimney.

For this reason it is good practise to line and insulate a chimney whenever you fit a stove

withabix

You should always install a flue liner if you are fitting a wood burning stove in a house built before 1965 (flue liners wer compulsory from that year)- otherwise there is a serious risk of chimney fires.

There is also a serious CO risk - if your neighbour won't sort the problem out, you MUST contact your local Environmental Health Officer, who will take the necessary action.

Quote from a website:

With a stove, 80% of the heat goes into the room, with an open fire 80% of the heat goes up the chimney and this means that the smoke from a stove is great deal cooler than from a fireplace. The result of this is that a stove will usually never manage to bring a masonry chimney up to operating temerature. This can mean that the stove will never draw properly, and the cooling smoke will condense, causing excess soot and, more dangerously, tar deposits. Tar deposits are not removed by a sweeps brush and cause chimney fires and you may get black tarry condensate leaking out through the bottom and sometimes even through the mortar joints of the chimney.

For this reason it is good practise to line and insulate a chimney whenever you fit a stove.


BUILDING REGULATIONS ALSO APPLY - YOUR NEIGHBOUR IS PROBABLY BREAKING THE LAW:

This website has useful info:

http://www.nef.org.uk/logpile/woodfuel/chimneys.htm