Howdy folks,
I'd very much appreciate your collective wisdom on issues we are having with our neighbor's fireplace. We live in an attached row house dating to the 1890s, and my next-door neighbor has a fireplace that backs to our shared party wall. Even after some re-bricking and insulation work, his fireplace is causing surface temperatures of >260 degrees on our side of the wall, which has us concerned both for safety and wall damage reasons.
My question to the group is whether such temperatures are normal, and whether we can safely install wallboard over such a hot surface.
This is our first winter in the house, which we bought over the summer. At that time, we repainted the walls, fixing what appeared to be water damage on one of them -- the wall was bowed and cracked in one place. Once it started getting cold out, the bowing and cracking started again, and I soon determined that the "water damage" was actually heat damage caused by the neighbor's fireplace (since the wall was hot to touch).
It turns out that my neighbor had his fireplace redone last season by a local contractor. I called them over, and we began investigating the problem. After cutting into my wallboard, it became apparent that the neighbor's fireplace had fully breached our party wall, and was actually resting adjacent to the plaster on our side. Below you can see the concrete back of his fireplace, where we had thought a course of bricks (i.e., my portion of the party wall) should be.
After much back-and-forth, we agreed upon a solution whereby they would replace the back of his fireplace with a single course of firebrick, install some fireproof insulation on our side of the party wall, and then cover it over with wallboard. Notwithstanding my concern that this provided only about 4" of insulation (whereas the code seemed to require 8" of masonry), I agreed to this proposed fix when my own inspector OK'd the plan. Below you can see the wall on my side after the re-bricking, as well as the installation of the insulation, which was adhered to my wall with SmokTite.
However, two days later -- before we had even installed our wallboard -- the wall started getting hot again. I put my digital meat thermometer against the wall, and the temperature readings started rising quickly, eventually settling at 267 degrees, as you can see below. My neighbor adamantly maintains that this is normal. My intuition tells me otherwise. What do you guys think?
Thanks in advance for any and all advice!
I'd very much appreciate your collective wisdom on issues we are having with our neighbor's fireplace. We live in an attached row house dating to the 1890s, and my next-door neighbor has a fireplace that backs to our shared party wall. Even after some re-bricking and insulation work, his fireplace is causing surface temperatures of >260 degrees on our side of the wall, which has us concerned both for safety and wall damage reasons.
My question to the group is whether such temperatures are normal, and whether we can safely install wallboard over such a hot surface.
This is our first winter in the house, which we bought over the summer. At that time, we repainted the walls, fixing what appeared to be water damage on one of them -- the wall was bowed and cracked in one place. Once it started getting cold out, the bowing and cracking started again, and I soon determined that the "water damage" was actually heat damage caused by the neighbor's fireplace (since the wall was hot to touch).
It turns out that my neighbor had his fireplace redone last season by a local contractor. I called them over, and we began investigating the problem. After cutting into my wallboard, it became apparent that the neighbor's fireplace had fully breached our party wall, and was actually resting adjacent to the plaster on our side. Below you can see the concrete back of his fireplace, where we had thought a course of bricks (i.e., my portion of the party wall) should be.
After much back-and-forth, we agreed upon a solution whereby they would replace the back of his fireplace with a single course of firebrick, install some fireproof insulation on our side of the party wall, and then cover it over with wallboard. Notwithstanding my concern that this provided only about 4" of insulation (whereas the code seemed to require 8" of masonry), I agreed to this proposed fix when my own inspector OK'd the plan. Below you can see the wall on my side after the re-bricking, as well as the installation of the insulation, which was adhered to my wall with SmokTite.
However, two days later -- before we had even installed our wallboard -- the wall started getting hot again. I put my digital meat thermometer against the wall, and the temperature readings started rising quickly, eventually settling at 267 degrees, as you can see below. My neighbor adamantly maintains that this is normal. My intuition tells me otherwise. What do you guys think?
Thanks in advance for any and all advice!
