Flue liner to stove connection inside chimney

[AtomicDog]

I'm hoping to find some suggestions on making the connection to the liner. First a little background info: 60 year old 20ft tile lined masonry chimney. Tiles are 7x11 i.d. 6in flex liner. Base of the chimney is at ground level. Stove is below ground in a block basement. Now the fun part: At the base of the chimney there's a 6x10in flue opening that's angled about 30deg. towards the block wall. About 3in below the flue opening there's an 8in tile thimble. 6in below that there's a 6in thimble. Down 6 more inches there's sand. All of this is head high in the block basement wall. The brick cavity is about 14in wide and maybe two feet tall. My thought is to not use the liner T connection. I would instead seal around the liner at the opening since it's pretty much a compression fit anyway, and use the existing 6in thimble. Basically using the small cavity as the T. This would eliminate the 24in horizontal run and allow me to use the 8in thimble for clean out. The other option is to install the T with a 22in snout ran through the 8in thimble and use the 6in opening for cleaning. Any words of wisdom? Thanks in advance.

 

[chimneylinerjames]

I would use the tee and have the lower thimble available for the cleaning. You want that liner to be a sealed system.

 

[AtomicDog]

I would use the tee and have the lower thimble available for the cleaning. You want that liner to be a sealed system.

I was thinking it would be a sealed system if I sealed around the liner, blocked off the unused thimble and sealed around the snout. It turns out to be a really big T, but with far less horizontal pipe. The dealer that sold me the liner stated I could leave the bottom cap off, which led me down this path of reasoning. The other issue is that the angled opening being just above the thimble makes the T want to angle the snout upwards, so I would have to force it to be level. I've already installed the T to the liner, so I'm not trying to make this easy by not using it. I just want the best system I can assemble. So far I'm leaning towards using the T. Not using it would be much simpler.

 

[bholler]

I am having trouble understanding your description. Are you saying there are three openings to your flue a 6 by 10 an 8" and a 6"? Pictures would help. we always use 2 tees where there is a clean out one for the crock and then a short piece of liner then one for the clean out with a cap on the bottom and either a cap on the clean out tee snout or a tight fitting clean out door. There is to much potential for air leakage the other way

 

[AtomicDog]

My measurements are close guestimates. The 6x10 is the base of the flue and is at the top rear of the chamber. About 3in below the flue is an 8in thimble and below the 8 is the 6. It's all air tight if either of the thimbles (crocks?) are capped. There is sand up to about 6in below the lowest thimble making the whole area about 14w x 24t x 12d and made of brick. The thimble wall is concrete block and may also be lined with brick. A T with a 22in snout extends about 6in into the room. The 6in crock has a compression fit steel pipe. The 8 is just the crock. I don't know why there are two thimbles unless a different size stove was installed at some point. There were several old coal/wood stoves in the basement when I inherited the house. All but one were the tall Warm Morning style. My Grandfather would just slide the burned out one to the side when he installed another one.

 

[bholler]

i would recommended 2 tees like i said it is the right way to do it

 

[AtomicDog]

Thanks for the help. Guess I will have to fabricate one. Not real sure how I will get it in the wall though unless I bust out one of the crocks for more room. Another aspect I failed to mention is that the thimbles are not vertically aligned. The 8in is to the left of the chamber and the 6in is to the right. The red line represents the interior walls.

 

[AtomicDog]

An overall pic. Pardon the construction mess.

 

[bholler]

You dont need to fabricate one you just buy 2 tees and snouts put them on the bottom of the liner and drop it through the straps on the tee snouts. And that offset is not to bad i think you should be able to make that work without much trouble at all.

 

[AtomicDog]

Well... I finally got the 22" snout assembled to the T. No room to get the cap in, so I busted out the lower crock. It was then that I discovered that the lowest part of the chamber is shared with my other chimney. A common cleanout I guess. It also looks like that area is huge. There's a hole at the base of a retaining wall about 6 feet away that's full of sand. Yep. It leads right up to the chimneys. The other issue is that the snout is very slightly angled in the wrong direction. There's not enough room for the liner to become vertical or better. My next step is to fill the bottom of the chamber with concrete in order to seal the chimney. I'm not sure yet which way I'll address the angled snout. I can leave it as is, not great, or completely seal that small chamber and remove the T, also not great.

 

[bholler]

i would just open up the wall at this point make all your connnections and go from there

 

[brenndatomu]

i would just open up the wall at this point make all your connnections and go from there

I agree, a $15 diamond wheel on your 4" grinder, a couple hours and a bucket of mortar you will be done and it will be right. It's very easy to mortar in new block/brick or even mortar a new thimble in. Just cut with the grinder and than snap it off/break it out with a hammer/chisel. Once you get a hole knocked through you can just "grind" away with the diamond blade, you can make some very precise fitting holes!
I wouldn't leave that snout angled the wrong way, asking for future draft issues. Git 'er dun

 

[AtomicDog]

I guess I'm not explaining this right. The problem is the back wall in relation to the flue opening. All of the connections are made. The wall with the thimble is mostly open now. When the T is flush to the back wall the snout is angled 2 degrees up towards the stove. I believe I need to drill through the back wall to see how many layers of brick there are. I don't know how the exterior chimney wall is constructed. This is right at ground level.

 

[bholler]

Put an elbow above the tee to bring it straight

 

[brenndatomu]

Yeah, I guess I'm lost as to what you are dealing with here.

 

[AtomicDog]

Maybe this will help:

 

[begreen]

Can you have the tee snout come out of the lower port so that the liner can be straightened after the offset? Smoke does not want to go downhill. Instead the snout should have a slight upslope to the liner of at least 1/4" per ft..

 

[bholler]

Like i said before open it all up and place it at a point where you can get the snout positioned correctly it might be slightly lower you might need an elbow above the tee you might need to remove some of that back wall. Without being there and seeing everything completely i cant tell you which of those options is best but if I were doing that liner i would open up the wall into that cavity enough you can reach in and work

 

[brenndatomu]

Ah, OK, much clearer now. You know, if you look at the above pic real close, it looks like someone has had the wall area open before. Look at the block/mortar in that area, looks newer. I'd say if ya can get in there, you can cut some brick or whatever out, get things to set straight.

 

[AtomicDog]

Busting out that lower crock gave me quite a bit of room to work. The elbow may be a good solution.