Chimney Help/Advice

Moneysava_wannaB

I not long lived at my current home,
and today while our fire was alight a handful of debris fell to the side of the fire basket,
the house was built in 1890 does anyone have any advice what this is?
The chimney was sweeped in september

welda

Looks like masonary from inside chimney, I get this too, your sitting there watching telly and WHOOSH, some debris from stack falls down internally.

Happens from time to tiime in my lounge, I have a gas fire there, every summer I remove fire, backplate, and clear away any debris, I'd say you have nothing to worry about, I don't!

:beer:

crphillips

It looks like the old parging from the flue wall. In Victorian properties they used to line the flue by applying lime render on the inside of the flue as they were built.

This gets damp when the flue is unused and then when a new owner of a house cranks up the fire for the first time in a while it falls off. There's not a Victorian property in the country where the parging isn't falling off from the flue. You could say it's nothing to worry about which it kind of isn't but now the lining has failed the gases from burning solid fuel will start to eat away the mortar between the bricks.

This isn't an imminent problem but it does destroy the chimney over a long period of time. Hence why building regs were brought in in 1965 that state all flues must be built with an impervious lining system. Would be advisable to have a proper, pressurised smoke test done if you don't know the history of the flue. Costs around £100 and will show any issue with the integrity of the flue.

Moneysava_wannaB

Thanks for replys I was worried it might be 3rd stage cresote buildup(all I could find on google)

Kimitatsu

We had this too - once you have regular fires the chimney will dry out and should be fine.

Our sweep gives us a certificate every year which details the state of the chimney/lining and brickwork so that if anything should happen then we can prove that our chimney has been swept and that no major issues were identified.

Think that he said ours would be fine for several more years yet even though the lining was starting to deteriorate

welda

crphillips wrote: »

This isn't an imminent problem but it does destroy the chimney over a long period of time. Hence why building regs were brought in in 1965 that state all flues must be built with an impervious lining system.

So its called parging, I always wondered the correct name for the stuff falling down chimney. I assume this does not apply to NG exhaust fume??

:beer:

ossian

:rotfl:Is there a fat chap dressed in red not looking jolly nor saying "ho ho ho!"?

If so I think there may be ashes in your stocking this Christmas!

(The deposits are probably his but he wont want them back)

w50nky

I had some of this debris come down when sweeping the chimney prior to fitting stove and lining. When up on the roof to remove chimney pot I found that the top 5 courses of brickwork had begun to crumble on the inside of the flue where the parging had been dislodged. This exposed the bare brickwork to the corrosive by-product of burning coal etc. I believe that this had happened as a result of the ingress of water into the brickwork through the mortar and flaunching as this was in very poor state. I think that this water ingress was then subject to frosts and this caused the top section of the stack to swell and further damage the stack. I removed the top 8 courses in total and rebuilt with new bricks and repointed the rest of the stack with lime mortar. Would recommend checking your stack pointing and flaunching when possible.

You can visually check your chimney pointing pretty well from ground level with binoculars.

crphillips

Welda.......natural gas doesn't give off the same kind of fumes.....its the sulphur in solid fuel that mixes with the water to create an acid which erodes a masonry flue......the only by products of burning natural gas is water and CO2 so pretty harmless.

It's actually the salts that are formed that do a lot of damage to a chimney.