is this the end of my dream

Greenfires

Generally speaking - it's usually a bad idea to seal up the bottom of a chimney inside a house. The chimney can end up breathing in and out for want of a better expression, and can often get damp when it breathes in warm moist air which then condenses inside the flue. Better bet is to install an air vent in the boarded up fireplace, and cap the pot with something like a C-Cap - which will keep out rain, birds and even insects if you use the mesh screen included - BUT will allow enough airflow through the flue to keep it dry and ventilated.

Open fires draw a huge amount of cold air into the house when they're running - they'll change all the air in a room several times an hour - and central heating can end up working overtime to keep up. Stoves by comparison take a tiny amount of air and put it up the chimney - if you think about it, the only draught up the chimney from a stove is what passes through those tiny air vents in it.

Andy

A._Badger

If anyone is interested in the question of damp and ventilation in older houses, I can strongly recommend reading Jeff Howell, who has written an excellent column in the Sunday Telegraph for many years.

I've recently discovered that he has his own website, which also looks interesting http://www.askjeff.co.uk/

teeni

Well builder came out today and with the help of cctv and his mate who is a hetas fitter has shown that i was right and the last fall did bring down the remaining nests so the chimney is no longer blocked.

There are various holes in the side walls where stones have fallen and the earth was the mortar from the stone work, none to big and no major damage.

He has advised the chimney needs repointing and that it will be best to have the chimney lined and a stove input with out any further work to the stack. The hetas guy who was with him gave us a quote which was very reasonable if we agreed to him doing the work in early january and we have booked him.

I am very happy and after a night of real worry over the matter can now relax. Even hubby, is looking forward to a nice cosy fire in a month of 2.

I agree with the poster who said this house was built for a fire it is a cottage and i grew up here. I remember well the open fire in the back room where my mother cooked and then the roaring fire in the fireplace we were having swept . the house was always very cosy. i cant wait

teeni

A._Badger wrote: »

It's impossible for someone to diagnose remotely via a forum posting but one thought I'd suggest is that your house was designed to have a chimney and for that chimney to facilitate a flow of ventilation through the house.

In my opinion (and I admit I am not a surveyor) many older houses suffer greatly from modern owners trying to make them airtight - it's asking for damp problems!

I'd imagine that once your sweep and a builder have sorted out your problems, your house will be a nicer environment to live in as a consequence. For it to have a living fire would make it even better!

When i was given this house ( thanks dad) it had pvc windows and doors and had all the sole taken out of it ( bad dad). We have spent the last 20 years restoring the property to the way it would have been when built 120 years ago.

gone are the pvc windows back are wooden sash windows, out with the tiles and in with lovely welsh slate through out the ground floor. gone is the modern kitchen back is a typical cottage kitchen with pine dresser and stand alone units.

The last step really was the instalation of the wood burner, Hopefully when this is done we can finally feel we have done justice to this beautiful old cottage

muckybutt

Well as far as the relining goes you have two options

Option one is to go for a stainless steel liner and back fill with vermiculite

Option two is to have a liquid cement liner done, this involves putting an inflatable sock down your chimney inflating that and injecting liquid cement down the chimney. More expensive than the stainless liner but it will bond the inside of the chimney together and make it a hell of a lot more stable and solid than it is now.

A few companies do it nationwide i'm not endorsing them and have no links to them but chimneycrete are one such company.

welda

teeni wrote: »

When i was given this house ( thanks dad) it had pvc windows and doors and had all the sole taken out of it ( bad dad). We have spent the last 20 years restoring the property to the way it would have been when built 120 years ago.

gone are the pvc windows back are wooden sash windows, out with the tiles and in with lovely welsh slate through out the ground floor. gone is the modern kitchen back is a typical cottage kitchen with pine dresser and stand alone units.

The last step really was the instalation of the wood burner, Hopefully when this is done we can finally feel we have done justice to this beautiful old cottage

Fruitfull day, with good end result! I wouldn't be too hard on "bad dad" fitting plastic windows, tis no fun at all painting them, I wish Historic Scotland would de-list this place, I would have plastic in, in a shot, better things to do with my time than paint windows, weather permitting of course, which does not happen up here very often in Scotland

:beer:

teeni

muckybutt wrote: »

Well as far as the relining goes you have two options

Option one is to go for a stainless steel liner and back fill with vermiculite

Option two is to have a liquid cement liner done, this involves putting an inflatable sock down your chimney inflating that and injecting liquid cement down the chimney. More expensive than the stainless liner but it will bond the inside of the chimney together and make it a hell of a lot more stable and solid than it is now.

A few companies do it nationwide i'm not endorsing them and have no links to them but chimneycrete are one such company.

To be honest i am not sure what the quote was for as he gave us a verbal price which he said he will confirm in writing with all details with in the week.

There is no hurry as he cant do the work until after christmas he is fully booked for weeks. He came out yesterday as a favour for his mate given my call said it was urgent as i was a bit worried the whole bloody wall was going to collapse, drama queen i know but i live in a semi detached cottage and when they were renevating the one next door they took the fireplace out of the kitchen and the chimney breast fell right up to the roof, there was a hell of a mess, silly b******s had not checked to see if there was a lintel above the grate and there wasnt, so when the cast iron grate and bread oven was removed there was nothing to support everything above it.

But good result for us and it should all be in place before the really bad january / february weather hits us.

sashman

120 years ago, say 1892'ish then, of course you will say that single glazing would have been right too nodoubts.....?

None of that double glazing rubbish eh?

Well thomas stetson is said to have patented DG using road tar and a piece of wood to stick two sheets of glass together.......in 1865 so your property could have had DG but that was probably a "modern invention" the equivalent of plastic today (something else that has been arround far longer than people believe)

sashman

Itismehonest

muckybutt wrote: »

Well as far as the relining goes you have two options

Option one is to go for a stainless steel liner and back fill with vermiculite

Option two is to have a liquid cement liner done, this involves putting an inflatable sock down your chimney inflating that and injecting liquid cement down the chimney. More expensive than the stainless liner but it will bond the inside of the chimney together and make it a hell of a lot more stable and solid than it is now.

A few companies do it nationwide i'm not endorsing them and have no links to them but chimneycrete are one such company.

Be careful with the vermiculite option.
When we moved in to our place both inglenooks were closed & filled with the stuff. One fireplace was home to the Rayburn cooker & the other to a wood burner. The Rayburn chimney has seldom been a problem other than when a bird nests or dies in it but the woodburner chimney was a nightmare.
Apart from the issue of not really heating the room unless the doors of the burner were wide open, tar used to come through on the wall in the bedroom above even though there was a metal liner.
The problem seems to have been rain getting into the top of the chimney & into the vermiculite which mixed with several hundred years of soot & tar in the old inglenook chimney.
So the burner came out, a proper basket & fireback went in, the bedroom wall was stripped & treated & no further problems
Decades later we still don't regret opening the chimney up.
We don't often use the open fire now as the CH is cleaner & easier but, when the urge takes us, we can still have a 4ft plus log burning on the open fire & we always know when the darned birds are trying to nest at the top from the sticks on the flagstones in front of the hearth. :cool:

hethmar

muckybutt wrote: »

vermiculite

Option two is to have a liquid cement liner done, this involves putting an inflatable sock down your chimney inflating that and injecting liquid cement down the chimney. More expensive than the stainless liner but it will bond the inside of the chimney together and make it a hell of a lot more stable and solid than it is now.
.

Mucky, not wishing to disagree, but the "liquid" is actually tons of crushed volcanic rock material mixed with cement and a huge amount of water into a thick slurry and its pumped under pressure down the flue. After the material has set the former is deflated and removed, living a new smoothwalled continuous lining inside the chimney.

To correctly centralise the void former ("sock") the walls should have openings made at 1 metre intervals or at least on any bends to pack it centrally. Otherwise you get a thick layer of material one side and nothing the other - you would be amazed how many people used to just throw the void former down, pump it up and not centralise it.

My OH used to train people in that system, in the UK and europe and we have it in our own chimneys BUT if not done correctly - and the criteria is to pump in a sound chimney only! - the weight of the material can bring down the midfeathers or even the stack or find its way into next doors house. The other problem being that the water content can activate sulphates in the brickwork and down the line the plasterwork of the room will become blackened and need removing and replacing.

As I said, it was a good system, my own chimneys were done over 20 years ago and as good as new but it really does depend on the operators skill or ability to think ahead and not rush and to undertake any remedial work required to the chimney before setting up the former.

In a chimney that already seems to be fragile, I dont think it would be the best system.