Removing Ground & First floor chimney breast

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Hi guys. The wife & I have just bought our council house and we are starting renovations on it to bring it up to scratch. The first job on the list is to gut the kitchen and modernize it.

What we have planned is to remove an old breast within the kitchen (on a gable, not connecting to neighbors), continue straight up into our boys room and take their breast out. Now this is where the breast ends, ceiling height of the boys room. We have no stack up in the loft and I presume this was removed when the previous roof was put on OR it was removed due to instability and the roof patched up.

So my main concern is, if we aren't going to be interfering with anything structural, do we still need to go through building control?

Thanks
 
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The way I understood it was that building regs approval was only needed if a portion of the structure was to be left in place and needed adequate support put in place OR if removing any part of the structure interfered with anything load bearing.

Please somebody correct me if I have understood it incorrectly.
 
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Please somebody correct me if I have understood it incorrectly.
You haven't quite understood it. It isn't just a case of 'something loadbearing' ,the chimney breast could be providing buttressing to the gable wall for example, depending on the length of wall and if there are any structural partitions running into the wall.
 
A chimney is not just stuck on to a wall. There will be a flue and random infilling and not the bonded inner leaf of the wall it is attached to. So that needs to be dealt with and that's one of the things that will need inspecting.

Fire performance of the floor and ceiling infill is another.
 
So in summary, really every chimney breast removal should have Building regs approval and a structural survey
 
No.

Structural surveys are not required. But b/regs applications tend to be required.

I could envision some small, fully external stacks not impacting on the structure.

In your situation, a visual check of the condition of the wall behind the breast, and any rebuilding of the wall is structural work but not work which requires the input of a structural engineer.
 
No.

Structural surveys are not required. But b/regs applications tend to be required.

I could envision some small, fully external stacks not impacting on the structure.

In your situation, a visual check of the condition of the wall behind the breast, and any rebuilding of the wall is structural work but not work which requires the input of a structural engineer.

Thanks. Just for your visualization, this is the ground floor breast, in a full length external gable wall that is only buttressed by the front and rear 90 degree walls at a internal measurement of 5.5m.

I presume just a building notice would suffice?
 

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