Old Chimneys

[EatenByLimestone]

So I'm looking around at the houses in my area. I live in a 90 year old house and I figure the ones around are somewhere around that age. I'm seeing some chimneys in need of serious repair.

Many, mine included, were originally installed with coal furnaces and have huge chimneys. My chimney has the water heater and the furnace exiting up it, but some look to be in such a bad state I doubt it would be safe to use.

So how hard would it be to tear an old center chimney out and replace it with a modern setup? Attic up wouldn't be a problem, but in the walls certainly could be. Were they attached to the house at any point going up or are they just supported from the bottom?

Edit: If the old brick could be removed, a chase could be built that could have 2 or 3 flues easily.

Matt

 

[dvellone]

Is the chimney in rough shape along it's entire length or just what's exposed to the weather? I've done repairs on a lot of old chimneys and the work was almost always above the roofline. You might be further ahead if the brickwork is sound inside the house by just repointing or rebuilding above the roofline and looking into a liner. It would be a shame to take down the entire structure if it's sound and can be lined. Brickwork doesn't come apart with too much difficulty but it's a big mess, and if the chimney runs between walls a bigger mess. The chimney should be entirely self-supporting but you never know.

 

[dvellone]

edit: I've done a lot of repairs on interior chimneys where the deterioration was almost always above the roofline. It would be a tough call getting rid of an interior chimney that wasn't in poor shape.

 

[fraxinus]

Mortar does deteriorate over time, especially in humid climates. I've helped take down - to the roof line and completely - 3 or 4 chimneys. For 2 of them, you could pull off the bricks with your hands. 90 years, though, is not really an extremely long time as chimneys go - my neighbor's house has a huge four flue center chimney dating from 1806 still in good shape. By 1910, mortar was better and stronger than earlier formulations. Completely taking down an interior chimney is a dangerous, messy job. Far better and cheaper than demolition/reconstruction is a poured in place liner.

 

[EatenByLimestone]

Mine is in good shape. I was thinking of some of the others I can see from my back yard. I repointed mine above the roof a few years ago and the prev. owners did the attic part sometime in the past.

 

[savageactor7]

Hi Limestone we decided to have the chimney removed and replaced a number of years ago...it was the original in this civil war era house.

Had 2 guys, a mason and helper tear out the old bricks from top to bottom and put in a 2 flue replacement chimney. ..took about 4 days. The helper brought out the bricks in 2, 5 gal buckets while the mason was filling 2 more.

Not something I could do but they made it look a lot easier than I thought it would be and everything was surprisingly clean too.

The old one had a 25* bend in it in the attic and that made it difficult to clean too. Pretty sure it cost right around 2k.

 

[Danno77]

Not saying anything about the interior of a really old chimney, but regarding the mortar on the exterior of an interior chimney (that sounds confusing).

Anyway, My house was originally built if 1858 and has never been repointed. Previous owners have left that task for me. It's amazing to see the condition of something having been left to the elements for 150 years. It's actually pretty decent. NOW, my brick home was added onto in the 20s, there is an attic space over the addition that lets me look at what was the original exterior to part of my house. This brickwork has remained relatively closed off to the elements other than not being conditioned with heat like the rest of the house. It is in PRISTINE condition. I use this information to suggest that (disregarding the interior of the unlined chimney) most chimneys in old houses (if properly flashed) should be in VERY good condition. I submit that they might require something to be done about the lining, but should be fairly stable. I do know that my chimney had some flashing issues at one point and also some flooding in the basement that compromised the mortar pretty heavily, but I've been told it's structurally sound.

I don't know about ALL houses and how they framed around the chimney, but I do know that I've been in several houses that must use the chimney for structural support. You can tell in these houses because of the impact of either the house settling around the chimney or the chimney settling faster than the house. In these houses you'll notice sloping floors away from or towards the chimney. You might also notice bouncy floors in other rooms, but nowhere near the chimney that provides more of a rigid support.

Most interior chimneys will never fall. the thing that would make a chimney fall isn't even related to mortar, it'd need a lateral force of some sort. and the nice thing about interior chimneys is that they are wrapped around to keep them perfectly vertical. The guy down the road from me, for example, has a brick wall that he constructed from salvaged bricks in an old home. This was is about 4 ft high and 30 feet long (I still wonder what he's saving them for) It has been standing for as long as I can remember and is nothing but a wall of stacked bricks no mortar or anything. He's just got it standing over by his other salvaged stuff and firewood stacks.

Don't know if that helps at all or not, but there's some anecdotal stuff for you to consider.

 

[drewboy]

Our first house was a New Englander built in 1876, it had a center, single flue chimney that was in rough shape. It was only used for the oil furnace but I realized that with a flashlight in the cleanout - I could see the light about 5 feet up - through holes in the mortar! Not only that but some of the brick was deteriorated to the point that it was crumbling into dust as soon as you touched it. They actually built the house with the floor joists resting on the bricks for support. Unsettling, not knowing what the chimney looked like behind the plaster walls so we had it lined. Also had balloon framing which would have made a house fire a quick event. I loved the character of the house but we ended up buying a ranch built in the 50's. It almost seems like the ranch has more maintenance issues though. Over the course of 130 years it seems alot of the old house issues were resolved ... maybe in 60 years my ranch will be all figured out...

 

[TreePapa]

I would start by having a chimney sweep come out and perform a video inspection on the chimney. That will give you a better picture of the conditiion of the interior of the chimney, and if he/she's good, the sweep can also asses at least the visible portion of the ext. of the chimney. An honest sweep should be able to tell from video and visible inspection of the chimney whether it can be salvaged with a liner or needs to be removed or abandoned.

The last time I had video insp. it cost about $100, but that was a few years ago, and our chimney is only one-story. Your cost may be several times that, but if it could save you the expense and mess of tearing down the chimney, it would be well worth it.

Peace,
- Sequoia

 

[aurora04444]

Hi, In both of the Maine 1800's houses we have lived in, both had chimneys with no support! They placed the chimney on the two layers of wood flooring without anything underneath. But I have no idea why they would think that was a smart thing to do! Of course, this makes the floor sag big time!

 

[EatenByLimestone]

The basement was probably dug after the house was built.

Matt

 

[begreen]

It's hard to say what has happened over a century of chimney use. When we pulled our old chimney I was appalled at the fragile state of the mortar. We could often remove bricks with just a tap of the hammer. We also found several taps that were poorly sealed up. One was just capped with a metal plate, right against wood!

 

[aurora04444]

EatenByLimestone:
It was somehow jacked up in the very early 1900's as we have a picture of trolleys and horse buggies in front of our house and the house was at ground level. Now it has a 5'6" basement dug for it with a foundation made of flagstone topped with brick.