Chimney breast removal

[BrianGeorge]

Hi All,
New to the site today.
I have a question about chimney breast removal. (I see that many others have also been stumped by this one) I have a chimney breast that in the upper floor is 100mm deep and the lower floor breast is 320mm deep. What I need to know is, where can I get the right brackets from? every builder I speak to has no idea.

Please help!! It's driving me mad

 

[Johnmelad502]

Posibly just me George, but I also don't understand the question!

 

[xerxes]

I believe you may be looking for steel gallows brackets, but it's not clear from your question what you are trying to achieve.

Try rephrasing; also, ask a moderator to move this to the Building section, where you're more likely to get some helpful responses.

 

[ln1234]

Have you got your local building control involved in removing your chimney breasts?

We are currently in the process of doing this and our local BC have said we can't use gallows brackets, even though our structural engineeer thinks ít's ok to do this. our SE and BC are currently in talks to find the best solution for this. I used to think SE calcs are the only thing required for BC to approve the design, but looks like that isn't the case.

 

[eggtastico]

you can only use gallow brackets if theres a chimney the otherside of the wall, so it can support it (providing that next door/room hasnt had the breasts removed as well) - this is what I was told when I wanted to do the same thing.

I did find someone on ebay of all places who made make the brackets to my sepcification for £90 each.

As it turned out my chimney didnt back on to next door's chimney, so I just took the whole lot out & fixed the hole in the roof!

worked out a lot cheaper & safer than what the gallow brackets & steel shelf would have cost.

In the long run, I wish I just bit the bullet & boxed out either side of the chimney breast & put an electric fire in the space of where the fire used to be.