Starting My Chimney Rebuild (pics)

I know nothing about Supaflue, but when I hear "lifetime warranty" my first reaction is, "how long has and will the company providing the warranty be around?"

DanCorcoran said:

I know nothing about Supaflue, but when I hear "lifetime warranty" my first reaction is, "how long has and will the company providing the warranty be around?"

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+1 .......

I have always been suspicious of lifetime warranties, never liked the idea of some company hoping they will outlive me ;-)

Todd, isn't that the way those are built normally? Just stack the clay in there, that is.

Ya, do it right this time. I've seen lots of them that were put up in the 70's and 80's and they go bad rather quickly.

I read an article about building chimneys back in the 70's and it said to stack the clay liners with out motor, so that is what I did with mine and the liner still looks good but the block is crumbly.

The poured liner would be very nice, but as you note, expensive.

Are you going to do a 6 inch liner?

The flue tiles in my chimney were not cemented in either and my house is over 50 years old. Infact, the guys broke the tiles from top down. I ask why and they said that typically the clay liners were not cemented in place. Start to break the liner out from the bottom and the whole stack can slide down and break-up causing a nasty plugged chimney at the bottom - not good.

I have to say that I am very pleased with my rigid liner with 1/2 inch wrapped insulation. If you don't go poured, I think rigid is the way to go.

Good luck,
Bill

I would bust out the old, damaged tile and slide in new ones, butter the ends with a waterproof heatstop alumina mortar, pour vermiculite/pearlite and done.

Wow. Ya, there's a lot of issues with that chimney. Some re-pointing and waterproofing would be helpful too if the budget allows. Supaflue and other poured liners are great products and will last a very very long time, but they are a bit pricey.

In most places, current code standards state that the flue tiles should have a non water soluable refactory cement joining them, not just loosed stacked. It is also against code in a lot of places now to replace clay tiles with more clay - they damage so easily they want them to be replaced with stainless or poured, or something else.

Removing those flue tile shouldn't be too difficult. That's a good thing. I would price out a poured insulation with the liner, also. I usually use blankets but in this case the poured insulation will add some structure to the chimney and really help it.

Hi Todd
How about stucco the chimney, SS liner with Ther-mix insulation. You mix up thermix with water and it sets up for some structal support. Then put a metal chase top on top of the chimney then you never have to worry about the crown cracking and repairing it down the road.

todd you said that you pulled your liner. do you have a stainless liner now? is that what you pulled? i'm not sure about the cost of bricks, and that's if you can get replacements. i rebuilt the top of my chimney last year. two sections of clay liner and three cement blocks. no brick. my original chimney was built in 1978. it had mortar between the liner blocks. all total for the rebuild in supplies were 52 dollars. if you have a stainless liner and it's still good that might be the cheap way out and still getting it done safely. just might take some time with the bricks.

just a thought
frank

Is that side of the chimney the worst? The white is efflorescence, indicates water getting into the bricks from above or behind and leaching mineral salts through. And that water is causing the spalling you're getting where the face of the bricks bust off when the water freezes or by continual efflorescence. If the chimney is in fairly good structural shape and this is the worst of it you can remove the spalled bricks and replace them with new ones. a grinder with diamond blade does a nice job of grinding out the joints to help remove damaged bricks and to clean rotten mortar out in prep for repointing. Even if you can't find an exact match for the damaged bricks the replacements will look nicer than parging over the damaged areas (you mentioned your wife's desire to keep the bricks.) If you want to parge over the damaged areas you can use mortar dyes to get a close color match.

If the top section is worse than the picture shows (joints deteriorated more than halfway through) it might be worth taking it down to where it's sound, cleaning up the good bricks, replacing the bad ones and building back up.

Either way, it looks like the top couple tiles are the damaged ones and they're easily replaceable. And from the looks of the picture it doesn't seem like you have a cap on this chimney. That's your protection against further damage. Should have a 2"overhang and space (caulked) between it and the flue tile to allow the tile to expand.

If you want to diy and save some money there's plenty of literature out there to guide you along your way. I've been in this business for some time but I'll say that just like almost anything you can do it as well as any professional since you want to do it right and not for the paycheck.

Todd said:

The top looks worse than the pics, lots of loose and deteriorating mortar. There is a cap up top too but it's pretty shot and I've been brushing on some cap repair sealer stuff every other year. Two different chimney guys recommend rebuilding the top from about where the roof line is, replace some of the lower brick, and use a sealer on the whole chimney.

I removed my 5.5" s/s liner and busted the old upper clay tiles to get a better look at the inside. Those tiles are coming out no matter what so I can get a proper sized insulated liner in there.

I decided to go with the rebuild of the top and a new 6" Supaflue for at least the one flue pictured. Once the old cap is removed I will decide what needs to be done on the other 12x12 flue. I might be able to leave it since it has an insulated 6" liner inside and maybe just pump the Supaflue stuff around the old tiles to fill the cavity. We shall see. I have about 100 matching bricks from my two hearth projects and if I need more I can get them. They will probobly start next week and I'll have some updates with pictures.

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Todd if you need some tile breaking rods let me know.