Upon inspection of a chimney today, I saw something that really made me shake my head. This was a ranch home with a wood/coal furnace in the basement area. What I saw in the basement was normal smoke pipe going into a section of 8"class A through a masonary wall. Onthe outside of the home was about a sixteen ft. vinyl sided chase with a class A cap on top. After somewhat of a strugle getting on the snow/ice covered roof the cap seemed to be some how connected to the class A but the top section was very loose so I pulled the 3ft. top section out of the chase. Much to my surprise that was the whole chimney.... Looking down the chase all I could see was the plywood interior of the chase and the piece of class A that went through the foundation Needless to say I told the homeowner to call the person who built the thing and got the heck out of there.....
Just when you thought you had seen it all...
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Wow that's scary stuff. All of us sweeps/installers should have a monthly contest to post he most idiotic setup we encountered that month. I have started making a library of our real estate & other inspections. Yesterday one of our crews cleaned a coal furnace. It dumped into a single wall masonry chase. The chase was swiss cheese and they had lined it with single wall black pipe upside down. Needless to say the black pipe was swiss cheese as well. They fervently explained to the owner that he should not burn the unit until the chimney is repaired. The scary & sad part is that they were telling him this as he was throwing kindling in the firebox. I have a signed 2 part inspection form stating in big bold letters that the unit is not to be burned. What else can you do?
How these things happen boggles the mind. somehow, someway they were probably not inspected (DIY) and if they were either the inspector just signed off on it or just did not know. I know where I live the building inspectors will sign off on a contractors work if they have been in business for a while and they have not had problems with the majority of previous inspections. Then everyonce in a while, they do "spot inspections" just to make sure that the contractors have not become complacent. Stuff like that post and previous posts (with pics) makes me scared of what has happened with all these new DIY shows. At least ole' Bob Vila and Norm abrahams used real craftsmen and showed ya how to do it to code. But in the past few years, alot of unqualified people have been trying to make money by flipping houses. Makes ya wonder if the majority of those jobs were up to code. My brother is a firefighter and makes a few extra dollars on the side by doing fire inspections on commercial/>2-family residential in the town he works. He is not one to break Bxxls and go overboard but to hear some of the stories. Just a few yrs ago, in Yonkers NY, my father in-law who has sinced moved knew the landlord and knew she was the cheapest, meanest person he had ever met, there was a father and 2 children who were killed from CO poisoning. Seems that the the flue ductwork on the cheap landlady's gas boiler was falling apart. So rather than have a professional repair it, she patched it together with duct tape and coat hanger. Mind you, there should have been a CO detector, but 3 people had to die b/c of her cheapness.
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