Part of Chimney Breast has been removed!!!

[Rob9999]

Good Evening Gents/Ladies

I've been following this forum for ages and have always found excellent advice on here.

My house was owned by the DIYer from hell, apparently he was an architect for the local council. I have spent the last 15 years putting all the bodges right. When I have time I'll list them, it'll give you a laugh.

The latest is probably the most laughable of all.

He put a dodgy loft conversion in for his drawing boards and having nothing to do I thought I'd have a good look around it to see if I can turn it into a proper room instead of storage. During this I discovered that he and his dodgy council mates had removed half of the chimney in the bathroom.

To support the corner of the rest of chimney in the loft they had put in a concrete lintel in the othe half with the other end supported on a piece of 3 x 2 across the ceiling joists tied into the purlin 2ft above.

Its been like that for about 25 years.


To make it safe I would like to put a concrete lintel (140 x 100 x 2400) into the chimney with the other end supported on the wall plate. The unsupported length would be about 1700mm.

Is this feasible? I would use steel but I don't think that's a good idea in a live chimney especially as the other half wants a log burner.

Regards Rob

 

[pinenot]

is the chimney no longer used?

 

[Rob9999]

Currently there is a gas fire that uses this chimney but as like most things remaining in this house it's cr-p so the gas is turned off. The wife wants a log burner in this room so I want to make the chimney usable.

 

[pinenot]

When you say removed half the chimney in the bathroom, could you expand on that?

"Currently there is a gas fire that uses this chimney but as like most things remaining in this house it's cr-p so the gas is turned off. The wife wants a log burner in this room so I want to make the chimney usable."

That having been said the next question should be will your planning dept allow any rooftop variations? You could take down the chimney for instance and put in a log fire flue to replace, or if Planning insists you could replace the external chimney with a fiberglass lookalike.
But if we can understand better the current configuration, it might help.

By the way, if it's stood for 25 years so far...!

 

[Rob9999]

Hi Pinenot

I'll try to explain in a bit more detail. I'll do a drawing when I get to work .

The original chimney is a 2 flue that feeds the living room and a fire that was removed from the kitchen. The house is a 1937 semi.

The chimney breast goes through the bathroom. To gain more space in the bathroom one flue was removed leaving the flue to the living room.

To support the corner of the chimney in the loft a concrete lintel was inserted albeit resting one end on the ceiling joists.

I appreciate that there is little load on the lintel but it concerns me that the lintel is supported on the ceiling. If I put a longer lintel in supported by the wall plate then the structure will be much stronger.

 

[pinenot]

This is an engineer designed bracket you might like to consider...pinenot

 

[Rob9999]

Hi pinenot

I have looked at them brackets. I could easiliy fabricate one but I would have to remove another few courses of bricks out of the dead flue which would take me above the supporting wall which stops at loft floor level.

I cannot access the chimney form below in the bathroom as I have just finished it and don't want to start knocking expensive tiles from the walls

Cheers Rob