Remove entire chimney on party wall

okhajut

I will have to agree with the neighbour. These chimneys are such a big nuisance in British houses, I wonder why we can't get a grant to have these things removed once and for all.

6.5k£ for the whole thing to be removed is quite a lot. I do not hope that the neighbours will agree to this, so in most likely I will not be able to do this.

ThisIsWeird

You've had a quote, then? Yes, that's a lot, but tbh I don't think it's the sort of building work that should justify a grant.

twopenny

Chimneys are a prime mover in selling a house in my area in that they are highly desired.
Indeed we had someone on the board rejecting a house because it didn't have a chimney so it isn't a one size fits all.

Section62

okhajut said:

I will have to agree with the neighbour. These chimneys are such a big nuisance in British houses, I wonder why we can't get a grant to have these things removed once and for all.

In many cases (yours could be one of them) the chimney helps provide lateral support to the wall it is built into/onto, and in some cases provides support to most of the house.

Some kind of blanket removal of chimneys would potentially result in houses being structurally damaged/falling down unless replacement structural support was provided.

There will be very little support for public money being used to carry out alterations on privately owned properties solely to enhance the owner's pleasure/comfort/convenience - except in the case (as existing) where grant funding is available for adaptations for medical/care reasons.

twopenny

okhajut I'm curious why you bought a house with chimneys throughout and not how you want to see your home.

Would it not be better to move to a new build with square rooms and no chimneys?

It would be cheaper and less hassle too.

Genuine idea as a soloution.

Ectophile

okhajut said:

I will have to agree with the neighbour. These chimneys are such a big nuisance in British houses, I wonder why we can't get a grant to have these things removed once and for all.

6.5k£ for the whole thing to be removed is quite a lot. I do not hope that the neighbours will agree to this, so in most likely I will not be able to do this.

Some of us are still using our chimneys.  I have no intention of knocking mine down.

okhajut

This house has 3 chimneys. There are two on the end of the semidetatched house. The only one that can be useful is the one in the living room. The other ones are no use. The third one passes through the kitchen and is the worst and I am wondering if it could be removed.

I do not understand why people would want chimneys when they are usually never used. I intend to keep the one in the living room but the other ones seem pointless.

Why did I buy this house? It was in my budget and the floorplan had what I needed and I came across it when I was looking to buy house and was able to get viewing before someone else's offer got accepted and was able to put in an offer that got accepted. This was after many months of viewing houses of course. There are many things wrong in the house but we are trying to fix them step by step. We converted the loft into storage space. We bought a shed. We are got rid of the ancient rusted metal fence on one side and replace with new fence. We got are going to be doing a lot more renovation work as well. All old houses have chimneys.

I am from abroad and find the UK houses to be rather backward. They were usually designed by someone to maximise profits and then sold to a customer. What should have happened is that someone bought land, designed a house like they wanted it, and then built it. This way the purpose would be what is practical and convinient and fulfills need rather than what maximises profit for someone that is never going to live there and had little or no input from person who is going to live there. The whole house building side of UK is seriously backward. Not necessarily in the materials but in that the focus is actually not the person who is going to live there. New build or victorian, they are all pre-built. It is not often to come across something that feels like it was designed with common sense, I am talking about floor plan here. Then, since labour is expensive, people do botched jobs that create even more problems down the line. Where I was born, people usually buy land and then build house and they build it just the way they want and it is quite common for old houses to be demolished and new ones built or major structural changes to be done in them. Also mortgages are almost non-existent for residential properties. Some people might get them but they are less than 10%. In the UK its not like that at all.

Just as an example when I goto buy a cooking utensil I always find something like "ergonomic design" "this or that material handle" "this or that material end" "handle remains cold" "shaped to maximize carrying volume" e.t.c. It gives impression that someone did PhD in spoon designing and then designed this spoon. But when it comes to house building, the only thing that comes in mind is "What were they thinking!?".

Ksw3

I think thr floor plan is more personal. Current tastes seem to be open plan but I would never want my kitchen in my living room. Tastes change and houses are largely static so over time they will seem less well thought out. 

FreeBear

okhajut said: I do not understand why people would want chimneys when they are usually never used. I intend to keep the one in the living room but the other ones seem pointless.

Chimneys date from a time when everyone used solid fuel (wood, peat, coal) to heat & cook. Then came gas, and solid fuel was used as a back-up. Today, coal is on its way to being banned (in the UK at least), and wood as a fuel is more of a life style than a necessity. Very few houses being built now will have a chimney - On a small development of some 70 houses not far from me, just one house was built with a proper fireplace & chimney (I suspect for a wood stove). Most of the other houses have a chimney sticking out of the roof, but these are plastic imitations, purely for styling.If you look at houses in other parts of the world where gas or electricity is in short supply, you will still find chimneys being constructed.

As to the design of UK housing stock - Victorian & later was driven by the needs of industry to supply the needs of workers. Pack them in with minimum space, and provide the bare basics with little regard to future needs. After WWI, the Tudor report set the benchmark for housing design up to the late 60s and still influences design today.

okhajut

Yes FreeBear, that is exactly my point. The housing design has been done by people that are not really going to be living inside of them. The buyer has basically no choice. If they really wanted to house as many people as possible then it was better to make wider roads with lot of apartments but that is never happened. I don't know if technology even existed for this in time of Victorians.

It would make more sense to demolish houses older than a certain era and rebuild new ones so atleast I can have a driveway. The back of my house has 25m of garden but no driveway and the bedrooms are not very large. What is the point of leaving 25m of garden space behind? I mean really? 25m of dirt? Why not make the house design larger? Who spends time in garden when it is mostly raining and very cold in the UK.

But here is another problem. The way houses are built now, they are not built to last long, the craftsman ship is just not there. It seems to be only about shortcuts to maximize profits.

So many great scientists have been born in the UK which includes Newton who gave us modern physics. But when it comes to house building, UK has always been lagging behind quite severely and still lags behind. I do not understand why. It is basically hopeless. We just have to make do with what we have.