Who Owns The Chimney

renegadefm

@kimber95s3

This is my original post. 

renegadefm

@kimber95s3
This is my original thread

Ectophile

Anything to with party walls is going to be a complicated and grey area.

You may have difficulty suing your neighbour if you get a leak from "their" chimney that your builder put up.  And after 6 years, you won't be able to sue your builder either (because of the Limitations Act again).

Houses require ongoing maintenance.  It's not a case of paying once and your house will be perfect ever more.

renegadefm

Ectophile said:

Anything to with party walls is going to be a complicated and grey area.

You may have difficulty suing your neighbour if you get a leak from "their" chimney that your builder put up.  And after 6 years, you won't be able to sue your builder either (because of the Limitations Act again).

Houses require ongoing maintenance.  It's not a case of paying once and your house will be perfect ever more.

But how else will this get solved? It won't involve suing anyone hopefully. As I said they have now agreed to comply with having it re-built.
Put it this way it cant not be done because my house will just continue to deteriorate if its not done. All other attempts over a 30 year period has failed. 

markin

Surely just putting a new pot on with a cowl is the simple and cheapest option,  You could even locate your flue and core drill a vent into it low down near the ceiling.

renegadefm

markin said:

Surely just putting a new pot on with a cowl is the simple and cheapest option,  You could even locate your flue and core drill a vent into it low down near the ceiling.

Both of the things you mentioned has been done or tried. Its been a nightmarw over the 30 years to try and solve this. Now we have no option to go to the extreme of rebuilding the chimney, something believe me I would have prefered to avoid. But we cant go on with this leak. Its now soaking the wood work in the loft area. 

Melanie1972

I might be being a bit thick here and haven't read all the replies but I'm gathering you haven't got a cowl or anything on your redundant flues?  Can you not just get them capped off and the problem should go away?

renegadefm

Melanie1972 said:

I might be being a bit thick here and haven't read all the replies but I'm gathering you haven't got a cowl or anything on your redundant flues?  Can you not just get them capped off and the problem should go away?

The pots to my flues were removed and the holes covered with slates and cemented over.  I did suggest to one builder in the past perhaps its an idea to put the pots back and just use a cowl, but he said thats a bit pointless as we dont use the chimney anymore. So theres now only 2 pots left for my neighbours use. 
But now the latest builder/roofer said to be 100% sure of curing this problem now is to take the chimney down completely to base level and seal my flues right up and then rebuild a smaller chimney for my neighbour. 

Melanie1972

renegadefm said:

Melanie1972 said:

I might be being a bit thick here and haven't read all the replies but I'm gathering you haven't got a cowl or anything on your redundant flues?  Can you not just get them capped off and the problem should go away?

The pots to my flues were removed and the holes covered with slates and cemented over.  I did suggest to one builder in the past perhaps its an idea to put the pots back and just use a cowl, but he said thats a bit pointless as we dont use the chimney anymore. So theres now only 2 pots left for my neighbours use. 
But now the latest builder/roofer said to be 100% sure of curing this problem now is to take the chimney down completely to base level and seal my flues right up and then rebuild a smaller chimney for my neighbour. 

Hmm...I'd at least get a few opinions...go for a specialist in chimneys i.e. a sweep to give you an opinion.  They are used to seeing these problems day in day out.  I think knocking the whole thing down and rebuilding is a bit overkill (I'm putting myself in that position as we do have open fires, thankfully with no shared chimney), and sounds a bit like the builder trying to create work.  I'm no expert and could be wrong though!  I would definitely ask a couple of sweeps around.  Pick one that's HETAS certified as they're more likely to give a brutally honest and accurate assessment.  Just cementing slates over is probably not the best, they probably should have been capped off properly as for all you know, the slates could be cracked and letting water in, or the cement might be too porous.

renegadefm

@Melanie1972
Well the thing is this leak problem has been going on for 30 years now. And I have had loads of builder/roofers,  I have actually lost count,  and I dread to think what its cost over the years,  probably a thousand or 2, but the leak is still there.
The current builder didnt force me to decide to have it rebuilt, we actually sat down with other options, but I said to him most of those options have been tried but failed. So it was me that said well lets bite the bullet and rebuild it to rule it out, then he said he could seal off the flues better so water cant drain down them. 
I admit it sounds extreme, but if you add up all the fiddling around we done over the years,  this is the lesser evil now.