Removing a Parkray fire

[Craig Hopper]

Afternoon all.

I recently bought a house that prior to us had belonged to an old couple and it still had a horrible 80's Parkray fire installed:

The fire has been all disconnected from the back boiler as the house has a full oil fired central heating system installed, which runs both the heating and hot water. From what I've been told the pipes have been disconnected and capped professionally.

We've had the chimney cleaned and had a small fire going in there so we know the chimney's all good and I've now started the process of removing the horrible fireplace and hearth. I'd also like to remove the Parkray itself and open it up slightly to, for the time being, just have a grate in there for a nice open fire that we can have on at Christmas and the odd dark night. It's a nice warm house so I'm not concerned about efficiency and don't have the money for a full log burner installation at the moment.

I've got it to this point so far:

I'd now really like to pull the Parkray out and see what's behind it. However I have zero experience of this so want to make sure it's safe. In my head I think that with enough brute force it will simply come out and leave me with a messy hole to sort out but my wife is worried that the chimney will collapse in if we remove it. I'm pretty certain the fire won't be holding up the entire chimney but what do I know.

So, can I basically just take as much as I can off the fire and force it out. I know it's going to be really heavy and make a hell of a mess, but as a starting point I just want to know if that's an option without paying someone to prop it up and take it out for me?

 

[OwainDIYer]

You didn't have to kill the dog, or remove all those lovely tiles.

All the attractive brown enamelled parts should be removable with a spanner (probably the door too) and that should give you enough room to get into the builder's opening and spanner off the pipe nuts. The throat plate inside might come out and give access to the flue liner. Then pull the cute little beastie forwards and it should slide out leaking some filthy black water onto your luxury heritage carpet.

Basically the reverse of how it went in.

There should be a builder's opening with a lintel well clear of the Parkray so it is not holding the wall up.

 

[Craig Hopper]

Just watching me chisel off all of those tiles was enough to tire out the poor dog

Thanks for the reply. So if I do get it out and want to install a simple open fire what sort of work am I looking at? In my head it will be removing some breeze blocks or bricks to make a nice square hole, replacing the horrible hearth with something else non-combustible and then putting some sort of fire basket in and Bob's your uncle. I suspect it won't be that simple though?

 

[OwainDIYer]

Depends what you find, and whether the chimbley's been lined or not. I've never installed an open fire before, but I have seen a Parkray go in as a replacement to an older stove.

 

[Hugh Jaleak]

You'll need to fit a fireback as a minimum I think. Would suggest you really need advice from, or a HETAS installer to fit something now. If you DIY it, and then light a fire, if something goes wrong your insurance may not cover you!

 

[Tony 1133]

I removed and replaced my Parkray nearly 20 years ago.

You will not gain access to the pipe fittings by just removing the enamel door, surround and ashpan cover. The fire is not holding up your chimney. There shoudl be a lintle above the fire. It may well have been just below the level of the upper tiles on the vertical face. In most probability once installed and connected up to the CH and immersion tank the apperture was bricked up close to the fire and plastered up to the lip that stands about 3" back from the front of the fire, on the fire. About where your TV is there will be a plastered up hole at the top of a steel flue. That will have been open so that once the installer had bricked up and plastered to the fire, the cavity around it could be filled with a non-flamable filler.

Chisel away the plaster and brickwork around the fire for about 2" or 3". You may well take out more. A lot of filler and debris will then come out, bags of the stuff. Eventually you will have clearance to get to the pipes. There are two on each side. One pair for the CH and one pair for the Immersion. You can now remove those with a pipe wrench or approrpiate spanners. Remove the throat plate and confirm whether there is a steel flue linner fitted on top of the fire. Then look for witness marks in the plaster behind the TV of the access hole I described. We have no idea what is on the reverse of the wall that the fire sits on so it may be on the reverse. Then come back on this board and post and I will describe the next stage further.

I just came on here because it was getting a bit cold and so I lit the Parkray today. I have now turned off the immersion timer for the winter and can already feel the chimney through the house, getting hot. I have not put the CH pump on and already the upstairs radiators have all become warm. It will stay that way through to March. The rads will knock off dependent on the thermostat. I make the fire once a day and it stays in all the time. I can't be done with all this caveman stuff of lighting the fire all the time or chopping logs up and drying them out. But its a lovely world and we are all different.