Good day everyone.
I have this old house built in the early 1900s. It has a brick chimney that has been cut off below the basement floor joists. This was a house that was moved from its original site to a new site and it was put on a poured concrete foundation.
The brick chimney terminates in the attic and it has had a chimney liner put in sometime in the past. What I would like to do is remove the rest of the brick chimney, preferably without tearing apart walls on the first and second floors.
The chimney will no longer be needed as the heating unit for the house will be outside in a separate building.
Is this a possibility that this can be removed from below, ie. from the basement? Also what kind of weight might I expect there to be there now? Right now it’s being held up by two teleposts supporting a small steel beam.
Would this chimney brick have been attached to the surrounding walls as it was being laid up in the same fashion as facing brick is attached to the outside framing of a house?
It measures 21″ x 29″ OS to OS with a course of brick in the center which creates two venting channels.
I’d appreciate any help anyone can offer.
HK
Replies
With a name like hammerkid, have at it ! ! !
I demoed an old chimney and was actually able to drop everything right down the chimney and clear it out from the bottom. The old crumbley mortar and bricks came apart very easily with a hand sledge. I can't imagine anything but disaster with trying to bust it out from the bottom.
Weight, I could barely guess. A lot ! If you have wheelbarrow access into the basement, all the better. There souldn't be any ties to the framing. Be absolutely sure nothing vents into this chimney.
Greg
Let's think for a minute about just what procedure you intend to use, if you're going to remove this "from the basement".
Will it be you that is standing next to the basement portion of the stack, beating it with a sledge?
If so, how fast can you run?
How far can you run, given the existing design in your basement?
And do you have any way of guaranteeing that when this thing starts to move, that it will fall perfectly straight -- not tilting even a little bit? Because when (Oops -- if) it tilts, its either gonna get stuck in the chase, or it will bust out the walls of the chase.
And it will do that while you're still just realizing that you need to run.
And if it busts out the walls, what happens to your plan of escape?
As to the weight of the beast -- think tons. One of the "general rules" that I've always used is that brick weighs about 5 pounds each. And a course of brick adds 3-1/2 inches to the height of a wall or chimney. Assuming there's 15 bricks in a course on your chimney, that's 75 pounds per course.
Each course is 3-1/2 inches, your house is two stories. That math works out to about three tons.
Which is easily enough to kill you.
Which we don't want -- we like our friends here at Breaktime.
So please, start at the top, and work your way down. Open the walls as needed, and figure out the best way to get the loose brick out of the house.
I won't be laughing at the lies when I'm gone,
And I can't question how or when or why when I'm gone;
I can't live proud enough to die when I'm gone,
So I guess I'll have to do it while I'm here. (Phil Ochs)
I was hoping he would broadcast this procedure on Justin.tv.com. I'd love to watch this.
Sorry. Maybe my advice should simply have been to have a friend nearby. And just before the swing of the sledge, he should say something like....."Hey Cletis! Hold my beer, and watch this!"
I won't be laughing at the lies when I'm gone,
And I can't question how or when or why when I'm gone;
I can't live proud enough to die when I'm gone,
So I guess I'll have to do it while I'm here. (Phil Ochs)
Hi, hammerkid, the advice you got from yesmaam is just right, we are Suburban Chimney of Silver Spring, Maryland and we take down chimneys often most of them outside the building. The ones from inside the building most of the time have plaster walls attached to the face of the brick structure that runs inside the home as part of the finished walls. We never make a mess and we always take down the chimneys carefully and remove it by brick rows at at time. If the chimney has terra cotta flue tiles, they can be heavy and bulky (two ft. long each).We also cover with plastic all around the chimney and one or two shop vac's going to catch the dust. The debris is taken out in 5gal. buckets. Also we cover the floors to and from the demo area. Some times we don't even have to haul away the bricks that come out of the demo because either the home owner of a neighbor would use them for their yard. So! start at the top, and work down, use a dust mask and gloves, it will easier! Did you mentioned if the chimney is over the roof line or is cut off at the attic?
Now that I check back at your post I see that it terminates at the attic, better yet, you don't have to climb the roof!
Edited 9/23/2009 10:40 pm ET by snoofy
Edited 9/23/2009 10:42 pm ET by snoofy
Thanks Snoofy and everyone else. I didn't really expect that I could do it from the basement but I thought that I'd ask anyway. The portion from the basement floor to the bottom of the first floor joists went with the house move. I considered that the mover might be able to lower the whole thing, but as you mentioned, the plaster is likely right up against the brick -- there's not much space at the joist level between the joists and the brick.Again, thanks to all.