Chimney removal (yet again)

[pjo123]

Mover into my 1930's terraced house 6 years ago, the previous occupants had removed the chimney stack from the groundfloor (kitchen) but have left it in the 1st floor (bathroom) and attic.

I'm thinking about possibly removing it from the bathroom so I could then turn my bath around.

The previous owners didn't support the chimmney when they removed the ground floor portion.

However, the brickwork hasn't moved, bearing in mind in the bathroom the chimney stack currently has steel lintels in supporting the watertank, there must be a lot of weight there, so it must be corbelled in pretty well..

Looking in the attic, the chimney stack comes out from the party wall at something like 45degrees until it's above the bathroom where it goes straight down. This 45 degree bit of the chimney is corbelled into a wall (that's built over load bearing solid walls downstairs) that's been built at a right angle to the party wall for the sole purpose of building/supporting the chimney.

It looks to me like as long as I don't touch the 45degree bit and the wall that's supporting it, I should be able to remove the chimney stack from the bathroom without any additional support in the attic and at worst,1 maybe two rows of bricks falling from the 45degree stack due to the way it's built.

PLEASE NOTE, I DON'T INTEND TO TRY THIS

However, I need to remove the stack from the bathroom as it takes too much space from an already tiny room, There doesn't seem much point in removing the 45degree stack and wall supporting it in the attic if I don't have to.

Wondered if anyone had any (constructive) experiance with this sort of thing. I would much rather support the bottom of the 45degree stack in the attic than take out all that extra brickwork and use something like gallow brackets. In my opinion, the support needed here would be for peace of mind only as again, the way it's built, it's not going to go anywhere.

What do the learned panel think?

thanks

Phil

 

[noseall]

actually what you're saying makes perfect sense, and i can picture exactly what you have in the loft.

problems may occur though, if the neighbours decide to remove their chimney etc, next door.

do you and the neighbours share the stack?

 

[pjo123]

Yes we do but I cant see them removing it anytime soon as they only recently had a new kitchen fitted etc with the old fireplace still in place.

If they wanted to remove their chimney now (which they don't) I would hapilly take mine out completely. But rather than mess around with gallow brackets and all that extra brickwork now, I would rather go the other route.

We're on good terms with each other and if ever they wanted to remove theirs, I would be more than happy to alter the way mines done (We don't intend moving and they've lived there for years, although I realise that future plans can always change)

If it helps, these chimineys aren't the main ones. We've got front and rear rooms with chimneys in the internal corners (including bedrooms) which back onto my other neighbours. These are the huge chimneys sticking out the roof. The one I want to remove, while still obviously big, is one that was originally used for only the kitchen boiler (removed before I moved in, but some pipework still there) and is a much smaller size in terms of the size of stack on the roof.