Help needed - fireplace and flue

[Tomoose]

Hi

I recently moved into a place, and the living room fire place just had a sheet of ply covering it, so I've taken that off, and removed the old loose brickwork from within, and all the cast iron fireplace stuff. I am now left with a nice opening which I will probably be building some shelving into for my hifi kit.

The opening is about 680mm wide, but there appears to be no lintel! I have had a good look inside the chimney breast with a torch and can't see anything that looks like a lintel. Would it be wise to install one? There was a very wobbly line of old bricks built up the inside of the fireplace which simply fell out, and across the top of this was a 2" wide steel bar, this wasn't the lintel surely? It might have stopped the 2 bricks falling down, but wouldn't be capable of taking any real load...

Also, there is a cast iron flue. How will this be supported or is it simply staying put due to magic? Do I need to remove it or support it some how? I was planning to put a good dose of expanding foam up it to be honest.

Any thoughts?

Cheers, Tom.

 

[r896neo]

The steel bar was serving as a lintel. BUT

In a chimney brest the structure is almost completely self supporting so removing a lintel would see only a triangle of 3 or maybe 6 bricks in the centre of the opening fall out. As a result often when old back boilers were removed sometimes it was neccessary to remove the lintel to get it out and people often put a bit of flat or angle steel in instead.

In reality this is fine and structurally probably ok even in the long term but while your at it do the job properly and replace it with a concrete fella. It's not hard or expensive.

Do a search as it's been covered a lot before, or if you have any other specific queries then just ask.

Oh and your flue will probably be held in place either by a vermiculite mixture surrounding it or potentially even just wedged in there with years of soot and crud. i would try and get it out as much as possible as water will get down there and leave rusty stains on your nice karman kardon amp

If not already done you need to put a vented cowl on the chimney pot and fit an air brick near the base of the flue, if you are going to seal it up.

 

[Tomoose]

Thanks for that - I'll hire an acro and a strongboy and get one slotted in for peace of mind.

The flue is about 10" in diameter (8 1/4" internal diameter) and there doesn't appear to be anything holding it in place really at all, certainly no surround or owt like that, just hanging in free space. I suspect there is a bracket tying it to the brickwork further up or something, as I've given it a good tug and it isn't going anywhere.

I'm looking into a solid fuel stove (woodburning or multifuel), but wonder if it will simply be able to use the existing flue with some sort of adapter, or whether we could just feed a new flue through it?

Really not sure what we are going to do with the hole yet at all!!

Fortunately there is already an air brick, and if I box it in I will leave it well ventillated for sure.

 

[r896neo]

if you do box it in make sure also to fit a vented cowl on the top of the pot.

 

[Tomoose]

Decision has been made - its being closed off so we can have a poxy electric fire. Great. I will install a lintel before close it up though so in the future "when the kids are older" we can have a woodburner or something.

Thanks for the help everyone.