Installing cooker into chimney breast

Angel2727

Hello i am in the process of totally renovating my kitchen and would like some advice re inserting a range cooker into a chimney breast. Can anyone tell me what is involved and who would be the best for the job?
The chimney breast is shared between two rooms, I would like to have a log burner in the other room if possible.
Many thanks!

rustyboy21

You shouldn't have an issue with having a log burner on the other side, as both flues will be seperate, the kitchen one is independant of the lounge one, even though they may look like they are attached.

The issue you may have is that in order to open up the breast, big enough to fit the range in( and the height to work in, you will more than likely be going above the builders arch in the breast, so you will have to reinforce the opening in order to take the weight of the flue and stack above. This may be with a concerete lintel or even an RSJ. Don't trust anyone who says it would be ok without, you have a few tonnes of bricks being held up by the wall you are removing.
A good general builder would be able to sort you out for your range. I presume it will be gas/electric? if it is solid fuel aga, speak to a sweep/HETAS engineer.

It is also dependant on what depth you have in the chamber, you may find it a little narrower than you think, ranges are quite deep in structure, it may stick out more. see if you can measure the depth, through the flue opening, to the back wall, it will be different than the depth of the outside breast.

Mayflower10cat

We did the same thing three years ago. We needed a good general builder to open up the old chimney breast and acro-props to hold up the wall, then a concrete lintel was fitted. He also went up on the roof and opened up the previously capped off chimney, we had the chimney swept, then a flue liner was inserted and a bird-proof cowl on top. The liner connected to the extractor hood below. We also needed a new cooker point wired back to the fuse box fitted by electricians as the range cooker was a high load appliance. Oh and we needed a tiler to complete the splashback when the range was in place. Our cooker does stick out slightly from the apeture, but it doesn't look odd at all.

CKdesigner

Hi

Other than the physical building works to alter the opening to accommodate the range cooker the extraction system needs very careful consideration. A normal house chimney is not designed to be used with a cooker extraction system and in most cases would be dangerous to do so.

The simple rule when it comes to extraction is 'to use the quickest and simplest route to the outside'. So this generally means turn the ducting left or right out of the top of the fan unit through the chimney side wall till you get to the house external wall and through that.

Sometimes you can only go up the chimney but if the chimney is in excess of 6m tall then this would require the chimney to be lined and a powerful external chimney motor on top. This bespoke extraction system would be costing in excess of £2,500 to do it properly. If not done properly (ie. using a normal extractor with an internal fan) up the chimney then it can result in a house fire. The reason for this is air does not naturally want to be pushed up vertically, it reacts very differently to being pushed horizontally, and what happens is the extractor pushes the warm grease enriched air part way up the lining, this air then starts to cool which solidifies the grease which becomes heavy so this then sticks to the inside of the lining. After a few years this becomes a few milometers thick, in itself its not a danger but if you for instance were using a wok one day and this flamed up, the flames would be sucked up by the motor and would find the grease being a fuel source, you can imagine what potentially could happen next.

I don't mean to scare anyone that has used their chimney to duct their extractor up but its not something I would do or any extraction specialist without a lot of planning.

Sorry.

CK