Chimney Breast Removal - conflicting Builder's advice?

cjb said:

Will the mess be THAT bad?

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Some builders are more messy than others ! If I was doing it, I would take my time removing one brick at a time to minimise the dusts. A lot depends on the builders quotation for them to rush it or not as time is money !

cjb said:

Will we have to replaster unaffected walls as well? I.e. will knocking out the chimney breast cause cracks elswhere do you think?

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Not always but bearing in mind that the chimney is structural part of the house and will come under the "Party Wall Act" if attached to next door neighbour. To put your mind at rest, the BCO & the structural suryeror will give you a full structural reports and doesn't matter what the builders says, they must follow the reports.

Some information here

I went through this process about 12 months ago. There doesnt seem to be any hard and fast rule to say that gallows brackets will technically be sufficient to support 1 story & the sub roof levels of the chimney. I was informed by by a structural engineer that strictly speaking gallows brackets will not meet the safety limits if he was to do the full load calculations.

Why not take the entire chimney out and save having to support what remains of the redundant stack?

aaront - Thanks for your advice; that is a possibility, we will ask the engineer about that tonight.

We share a stack with our neighbours so we either have to get their consent, or cut the stack in half. If we didn't share, I wouldn't think twice about removing the stack - it's only visible with binoculars from the bottom of our garden (ish! ) so asthetically I wouldn't be committing a terrible offence (well, to some conservationists I would, but I can live with that!)..

I think if we do remove the 1st floor chimney breast we will be looking at having to put a steel in.. as I am rather twisting my husband's arm to have the work done in the first place I am a bit reticent to opening what may be an expensive can of worms... Those 4 littles words, "I told you so", can resonate for a very long time Probably leaving the upper breast in place and only having a downstairs steel is the way we will go.


Masona; thank you so much for that link, that's incredibly useful.

We have a structural engineer coming round tonight, I am now much more informed and will look less like a complete banana

The builder has quoted 4 days for knocking the wall & chimney breast down, & making good... I don't know if this is good or bad regarding taking his time, I can ask the engineer of course.

Like I said, I think we are now leaning toward leaving the upstairs breast in place, unless the engineer goes against all Builder 2 has said about - which he might, but Builder 2 does seem to be talking sense.

Thanks everyone.

Had the guy round last night - considered opinion is it's best to cut away the chimney stack, removing the need to support the upper wall. Downstairs wall will of course need a steel as we're removing it totally.

Engineer agreed that the downstairs chimney breast (at 6ft wide by 4 ft depth) is quite the ugliest monster he's ever seen in a 10 x 12 room.. nice to have someone in agreement with me for a change !

Now to get quotes for removal & making good ... stage 2 had two quotes so far... one for £1,500, one for £4,000... nice to see a bit of consistency

Thanks for your advice.

It will be messy!!

I recently just swept one of my chimneys and was consumed in a constant cloud of soot and dust.

I then re-built the lower part of my other chimney stack which whilst only a small job still meant I had grity and dust in my food!

The following link provides a tool which calculates the cost of removing 1 or more chimney breasts from you home - http://www.chimneybreast.co.uk

I think these costs are specific to the company running the site, but nevertheless it gives you an idea of how much the job will cost. I found this helpful and hope you do too.