Need Help Finding Chimney!

[dave12]

I'm hoping some of you experienced builders may be able to help me here (please!).

My House was built in the 70's (77 I think). Originally the room I am concerned with was a Garage. This was converted around 10 years ago to a Bedroom, Ensuite & Sitting Room. I am now converting this space into a Kitchen / Diner and would like to install a Wood Stove.

Now, the House has a Chimney stack which is on the side of the house and doesn't appear to be part of the main structure like an old house would have. There is one chimney currently in use (Upstairs Living Room). But according to the original plans (from 77) there should be a chimney (Clay Flue) which goes down to the old Garage. This is also backed up by the fact that there is a capped chimney pot on top of the stack beside the 'live one'.

But I'm struggling to find how I get into it. I think that there is no actual opening to the clay flue as it has never been used and the stack is not an integral part of the house?????

I have stripped back the walls to bare brick and there are no clues as to where I can make an opening etc ie a vent or something. All I can do is measure where it should be according to the original drawing and hope! But I'm not really wanting to go in with a corer blind...hoping I hit the flue. It looks as though I would need to drill through 2 skins of wall before hitting the flue.

Has anyone come across this before? If so, can you offer me some advice as to how I get into the flue?

I will try to post a picture of the plans if this helps? Apologies for the long post, but hopefully it makes sense.

Thanks in advance!

 

[dave12]

Here's the part of the plan I'm talking about.

 

[ree]

Are you saying that during the conversion a two flue chimney was built onto the garage wall? But only the first floor fire place was opened up?

You could judge where the flue would be centred in the kitchen wall (take measurements from the outside), and remove a couple of bricks to see if you've hit the clay linings mentioned on the plans. Dont disturb anything just post pics of what you've exposed on here.

Using the dimensions given in the stove Mfr's Inst's you will be able to mark out how wide and how high to open up the brickwork. But first the pics.

 

[dave12]

Hi Ree, thanks for the quick response. The 2 Flue chimney was built at the same time as the house in the 70s.

I have taken measurements off the drawings and am pretty sure I know where it should be. But am a bit nervous of taking bricks out of the side of the house as I suspect I need to go through the cavity, then through another layer of brick before hopefully coming across the flue. I'm just not sure if it's ok to do that!

Below are the pics which might make it a bit clearer. You can see where I have cut the plaster hoping to find a vent or something. But it's just brick.

On this pic you can just make out the cap if the flue I'm wanting to use ( to the left of the big one)

 

[bernardgreen]

Have you looked down through the "spare" flue ?

It is possible that there is only one flue with two voids one either side of the flue. The voids to add width to make the stack more attractive and stronger without adding a heavy mass of in-filling brickwork

That is the way our chimney was constructed "external" to the house.

 

[dave12]

Not actually looked down it yet, but there's definitely a hole under the cap. I'll need to chip the cap off to see if the liner is there.

Pretty sure there will be though as the cap is vented and according to the dwg it should be there.

 

[bernardgreen]

The void(s) would have to be vented. Ours were vented into the bedroom to recover the heat from the ceramic flue. ( legal at the time the house was built and approved )

 

[dave12]

This definitely isn't vented. Anyway, after confirming it was a clay flue by removing the cap, I bit the bullet and knocked out a block. And there it is the clay flue.

Thanks for all the replies!!

 

[ree]

dave12,

Thank you for coming back and telling us how things turned out.

A couple of other things:
smoke test the flue when its been opened up.
Have a site meeting with a HETAS and use the HETAS to do whats necessary for your certification. Have stove Mfr's Inst's on site for the heads up meeting.
Think about what kind of fire surround you want?