One brick width behind my attic wall and the flue .. a disaster?

[WoodBurner777]

So I was bored and curios, wanted to see how many widths thick the brick was between my attic wall and the flue , well I cut a few small holes in this partical board like sheating, first I see some gapps in the cement , so I made some more holes , I was hoping to see two widths of bricks instead I seen the flue , then the bricks have basically little to no motar between them so I pulled a couple out by hand without using any tools or chiseling and there I can see the clay flue, and also a gab between to flues … what now .. ?

 

[WoodBurner777]

 

[NickW]

Not good... @bholler will probably have words of wisdom (like don't burn until you put in an insulated liner with zero clearance rating...).

 

[bholler]

View attachment 292577
So I was bored and curios, wanted to see how many widths thick the brick was between my attic wall and the flue , well I cut a few small holes in this partical board like sheating, first I see some gapps in the cement , so I made some more holes , I was hoping to see two widths of bricks instead I seen the flue , then the bricks have basically little to no motar between them so I pulled a couple out by hand without using any tools or chiseling and there I can see the clay flue, and also a gab between to flues … what now .. ?

View attachment 292578

Honestly you need a new chimney. There is no way to make that safe.

 

[WoodBurner777]

Honestly you need a new chimney. There is no way to make that safe.

It looks like when it was constructed they just loose laid bricks and rubble in there without any care , Also the tar paper abs sheating are basically right up against the bricks with no air space

 

[stoveliker]

Take all out and go with stove pipe and above the ceiling or outside the wall go with class A.

 

[begreen]

Sorry to see this. Your instincts are right. What does this chimney service? Fireplace, furnace?

FWIW Crappy chimney construction was the cause of this fire. It took 40 yrs for pyrolysis to finally bring the wood down to ignition temperature.

 

[WoodBurner777]

Open fire place

 

[WoodBurner777]

What’s interesting is I had a fire actually going in this flue’s fireplace as I did this , glad I decided to take a peek back there , the clay flue it self was barely warm
To the touch maybe less warm then touching a humans hand/skin I could say… and also I’m surprised the gaps in the flue didn’t show any soot/smoke leaking thru them . Whatever the case I’m done burning wood , I couldn’t believe how those bricks were just loose laid in there like that . House built in 1965

 

[WoodBurner777]

The little bit of motar on some of these bricks were actually laid up into that tar paper and bonded it to it, as if the framing and sheating paper was installed first then the chimney brick laid , actually it had to be that way because there was nails in the sheating that couldn’t have been hammered in there if bricks were up against them

 

[begreen]

What’s interesting is I had a fire actually going in this flue’s fireplace as I did this , glad I decided to take a peek back there , the clay flue it self was barely warm
To the touch maybe less warm then touching a humans hand/skin I could say… and also I’m surprised the gaps in the flue didn’t show any soot/smoke leaking thru them . Whatever the case I’m done burning wood , I couldn’t believe how those bricks were just loose laid in there like that . House built in 1965

The house I posted the picture from was built in 1969.

Sounds like it may have been contractor built instead of by a good mason. What is the flue tile dimension?

 

[WoodBurner777]

Inner dimensions are 7x 11 and outter I think is like 8 x 12, the whole house is brick . The fireplaces and boxes and smoke chamber themselves are built neatly it’s just amazing how they could do that yet completely not really care about the inner wall of the chimney ( this is a exterior chimney ) with two flues
perhaps back in those days they thought the clay flue it self was good enough to contain heat and that motar joints would never fail between them ?