Debris coming down chimney

freebetsfreetips

We have a gas fire and a lot of dust, gravel and debris comes down the chimney. I'm not sure how sealed up the chimney is, or needs to be, but what can we do to fix?

stuart45

It sounds like you don't have a metal liner, but the original flue which was normally brickwork parged with sand/cement render. Over the years this breaks away and falls down the flue.

Undervalued

stuart45 wrote: »

It sounds like you don't have a metal liner, but the original flue which was normally brickwork parged with sand/cement render. Over the years this breaks away and falls down the flue.

Indeed.

I had exactly this problem with a decorative gas fire and the advice I got from a builder was as follows.....

Either.....

1 > Live with it! As he pointed out, it is a question of scale. If you are talking about say half a coffee mug of bits of render / sandy grit every now and again it is a tiny percentage of the several wheelbarrows fully of rendering that will have been applied when it was built. Also depends a bit on what type of fire you might use the chimney for in the future.

2 > If the gas fire has a flue outlet to which a flexible liner looking a bit like a hoover hose can be connected, it is a relatively small job to drop one down from the chimney pot and connect it to the fire. That should stop the problem getting worse but some stuff will still fall around the outside of the liner. Can only be used with a appropriate gas fire.

3 > The proper solution is for the chimney to be professionally lined with a stainless steel liner and the gap between it and the existing chimney properly filled. You can then burn any type of fire, gas or coal / wood etc. However this is expensive.

freebetsfreetips

Hi

Sorry for the slow response! What sort of price do you think option 3 might be?

We don't mind living with it really was just concerned it might be a sign of a bigger problem, or lead to one. Slight issue is that the dust has in the past blocked the fire up. We're thinking of getting a chimney sheep or similar for draft exclusion but suppose we could use that and then cover the fire when we removed it so the render didn't go in in the fire. Does that make any sense?

Undervalued

freebetsfreetips wrote: »

Hi

Sorry for the slow response! What sort of price do you think option 3 might be?

We don't mind living with it really was just concerned it might be a sign of a bigger problem, or lead to one. Slight issue is that the dust has in the past blocked the fire up. We're thinking of getting a chimney sheep or similar for draft exclusion but suppose we could use that and then cover the fire when we removed it so the render didn't go in in the fire. Does that make any sense?

I have no idea I'm afraid. It was twenty years ago and the builder I asked was semi retired so wasn't looking for work but was a friend of a trusted friend. Back then I think he mentioned something like "a couple of hundred" for the cheaper option 2 and "about a thousand" for the proper job (option 3). Even if that was right I would imagine it would be at least double that now.

Obviously you can't block up the chimney if you use the fire unless it is one of the flueless catalytic converter types. I would be tempted to get some proper advice, particularly if you are likely to want to use the chimney at some point in the future.

freebetsfreetips

Is it a builder, a chimney sweep, or are there chimney specialists? Sorry, I guess i can probably google this and try and find out!

Undervalued

Ideally you need to consult either a decent small builder or a chimney specialist.

Just using a chimney sweep will simply bring down what is already loose and maybe loosen some more. That is not a long term fix.