Unsupported chimney stack

[hands]

Hello all.

We are currently renovating our house and have a chimney stack that has been removed from the ground and first floors. This stack is shared with our neighbour (their stack is in place on the ground and first floors). Complicating matters slightly are the facts that:

- Above the first floor there is no party wall between our property and our neighbour's.

- The stack only protrudes out of the wall by around 70-80mm.

- There are four flues (two our, two our neighbour's) arranged linearly leaving very little brick into which to place gallows brackets.


We have taken advice from a structural engineer, and he recommended the use of gallows brackets but the chimney depth was mis-measured.

Any advice on how to support the chimney - or whether it even needs supporting - would be much appreciated.

 

[HERTS P&D]

Get a structural engineer to come round and look at it.

Andy

 

[^woody^]

I've not seen any 80mm gallow brackets. Are they worth it?

 

[hands]

The structural engineer measured the chimney depth to be 200mm, but that's over the top of the party wall (the top of which can be seen in the roof space, as it ends just beyond the first floor ceiling).

That's the issue - gallows brackets are in the order of 100s of mm rather than 10s of mm!

 

[hands]

Thanks all for the advice. The builder that we went with came up with this solution - a concrete lintel across the chimney stack to spread the load and support the chimney.

Untitled

• hands
• 25 Jan 2013
• 1

 

[tony1851]

He's obviously a better engineer than your SE

 

[hands]

Haha!

The open flues that you might just be able to see in the picture have now been bricked up as well, so it should all be solid now.