A tale of a flying cowl, a Mercedes and broken foot

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In the recent windy spell, the cowl was blown off the top of my chimney, I have retrieved it but it has been damaged following a collision with my neighbours Mercedes parked below.

So I need a new cowl fitting. I don't intend to fit it myself (I'm banned from ladders anyway by Mrs Stem, after I fell off and broke my foot. Actually I broke it twice but that's another story.)

So I would like some advice please. The house is a 3 bed detached built in the mid 1960's with a traditional brick chimney for a open fire. (Class 1?) with a pot on the top. The chimney breast is external to the house and so can be accessed from my neighbours drive without climbing on the roof.

The fireplace is now fitted with a decorative gas fire, which because of its terrible inefficiency (somewhere in the region of 50%) we don't use very often. So my questions are:

1. Can anyone recommend a suitable cowl that will reduce the down draught at the fireplace as much as possible, but still be safe to use with a gas appliance. I want to be prepared in advance, so that I can discuss it with whoever gets the job.

2. Should the cowl be fitted by a gas safe engineer who I imagine will test it, or is it OK to get a builder, or roofer to do it? The reason I ask is because the 'gas safe' guy who services my boiler says he doesn't do chimneys.

 

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Whoever fits the cowl the flue needs testing immediately afterwards to ensure its still safe.

Since the flue and cowl act together there is probably no other way than a try it and see to know if its going to help.

That can be expensive and I am surprised you want to bother for what must only be a very small advantage.

So what about the damage to the merc and the neighbour?

Tony

 

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The Merc is actually a van (my neighbour is a locksmith) and fortunately the cowl only made contact with the roof rack which made a nice crease in the cowl, but the roof rack only received superficial damage which fortunately he's OK about. I didn't mention it was a van because I thought it made the post a bit more dramatic. Sorry

Makes me wonder though. If it had caused any damage to the vehicle whether my house insurance would have coughed up, or not. My experience of house insurance is that whenever I've wanted to make a claim there's some clause somewhere that says I can't, or the excess is multiplied by a factor that makes it uneconomical to claim.

I hope the new cowl lasts longer. This one was only fitted about 5 years ago when we had the fire installed.