"Ornamental" chimney

k4kate

Hi all

Just thought I'd post and find out if anyone is or has been in the same boat as us...

We have recently moved into a 10 year old Persimmon home (NHBC expired in March). As part of the original planning regs it was built with a feature chimney which is essentially just plonked on the roof with no proper support and gives no benefit to the house as there is no chimney breast.

It was picked up in the valuation survey that it is leaning inwards (quite visibly so) which is no surprise as it is only really supported on the outer side by the outer wall. We are thinking that we will need to have it removed which is going to prove difficult/expensive as the house is a 3 storey link detached making access tricky.

Has anyone else experienced this? What did you do?

Thanks

Furts

The "ornamental" chimnies are a ticking time bomb for hundreds of thousands of home owners. They were ill conceived and ill thought out, then erected with no attention to detail, and no track record of testing and checking.

It is unfair to blame the planners for this situation. They may have requested chimnies, but Persimmon, Barratt and all the others responded by cutting corners to achieve this. They did this by building false chiminies.

The positive news is these are pieces of fibreglass, and do not weigh very much. However, slips of brick are glued to the fibreglass to give a brick appearance - so this adds to the weight.This in turn helps hold them in place, but if they move there is a problem.

To exacerbate the problems there are timber frame houses with these chiminies - this is a bad design detail, but the builders got away with it!

I suggest you either;
1) live with the situation, monitoring to make sure it does not become a danger to the structure or to safety.
2) rectify by rebuilding, which is possible from working in the roof space if access is a problem. But you should be able to pitch a scaffold off your garage, or remove garage roof tiles and pitch through, or span the garage with ladder beams and pitch up.

Be aware that if you rebuild the problem may occur in future, so thought and care need to occur.

k4kate

Thank you Furts, you are a mine of information

I did wonder about accessing it from the roof as this would be much safer than scaling the roof 3 storeys up. Unfortunately the chimney is on the side which has next door's garage attached to it so I think we might struggle involving the garage!

It is pleasing that it is just fibreglass with a brick veneer as this will make dismantling and removing a bit easier.

Thanks again.

Gloomendoom

Couldn't you stabilise the sag from within the roofspace by reinforcing the roof structure under the chimney?

Furts

k4kate wrote: »

Thank you Furts, you are a mine of information

I did wonder about accessing it from the roof as this would be much safer than scaling the roof 3 storeys up. Unfortunately the chimney is on the side which has next door's garage attached to it so I think we might struggle involving the garage!

It is pleasing that it is just fibreglass with a brick veneer as this will make dismantling and removing a bit easier.

Thanks again.

You may have fibreglass copings on the gable walls, or a parapet wall with a concealed gutter behind it. If so, if would be prudent to check these when the work is being done.

If you have ordinary verges it would still be prudent to check this when the chimney is removed.

After ten years some maintenance is to be expected - and Persimmon were never a builder who cared about quality or attention to detail. (Hence your chimney issue comes as no surprise to me!)

One day you will be selling so expect questions such as "Why has this house not got a chimney when the others have?" and "Did the Planners allow the chimney removal?"