Demolishing a 1920's red brick chimney

We have a 1920's weatherboard with a triangular shaped corner of the kitchen and living room taken up with a fireplace that we no longer use. We are considering demolishing the chimney and fireplace to enable us to use the lost space in these two rooms., ie. it would give us two additional corners which we particularly would like for space in the kitchen. The chimney is made of red bricks and I would guess there might be about 1000 bricks??

Has anyone demolished similar or have any ideas/ tips or questions that we might need to know before attempting this? Cheers.

Anyone know if asbestos is a concern? Probably too old to have it, but thought I'd ask.

You might want to think about giving it a good clean first :) A work colleague used a home built cyclone with a vacuum cleaner attached to clean his chimney. Reckons virtually all the soot was caught in the cyclone bucket!

Definately vac as you go , beware of the whole thing collapsing on you , other wise start at the top take some tiles off and get rid of the bricks one at a time . Would also pay you to hang plastic sheets floor to ceiling a meter or so into the room as a barrier to the dust and soot you miss with the vac. Be carefull not to drop bricks on the concrete base , cause if you damage this its a bitch to repair replace:eek:

Rgds

I did this recently, removing a central fireplace and a corner fireplace from a 20's California bungalow. I guess mine was easy because it was a complete gutting, so didn't have to worry too much about the mess. You are right about the number of brinks, I estimated that there was about a thousand (kept them for paving later on)

As was mentioned, just start at the top and take them down one by one. I did the corner one on my own in about 5 hours, and that was cleaning and stacking the bricks.

The old lime mortar is quite soft. You'll wonder how the thing stayed up there for so long. Occasionally you will have to give the bricks a bit of a tap, but nothing too much. I guess the difficulty in your situation will be how to remove them. Stuff above the roof will be OK - just throw down to the ground. If the exterior of the chimney is covered in cladding of some sort, life might bet a bit interesting taking the bricks out through the house.

In that instance, you'll want a team of at least two. Lay some plastic down over your floors etc so you can barrow the bricks out. Stick a piece of foam or some old pillows or something in the fire place and send the bricks down the fireplace on to them in lots of 3 or 4. Get your mate to load them up and wheel them outside. Make sure you have a good clear signal like yelling out "Clear" when there are no more bricks coming down so your mate can keep his hands. Otherwise you might run out of mates before you get it down...

Yeah ... Ive also done a coiple of these. Much easier to remove the bricks than expected. Also, there are more bricks in a chimney than you would expect too ... my single chimney did all my garden edging two high!

Duct tape and a roll of plastic will be your freind!

To reduce the mess in the house, seal up the corner of the room completly and work from the outside as much as you can.

Cheers

Rod

Start at the top and work down.
Don't work on a wet roof.
Put a sheet of ply or chipboard on the roof so that the odd falling brick doesn't damage the roof.

If you're not going to salvage the bricks, a light sledge hammer or the back of a firewood splitter will demolish it very fast.

Taping plastic sheet across the front as Rod suggests contains the dust and mess.

This sounds like we need to do at our place.

Would I be correct in thinking that once you have done the removal above the roof line, you get into the roof space and continue on?

Thanks

Yep ... I guess it depends how close the chimney is to the edge of the house as to how many bricks would actually be in th roof space.

Our chimney tilted away from the house due to rainwater going underground near its foundations. We have a gas space heater and no need for a chimney, and so we decided to get it down. My first quote from "experts" was for two men over four days, and that meant over a couple of grand. The second quote was from a local demo bloke, and he quoted a quarter of that amount. He and his son came in at nine, and left after sweeping up at twelve thirty. The older bloke got his scaffolding up and a jack hammer, while son walked back and forth carrying the bricks.

Get professionals is my advice, as it gets harder when the fireplace gets done. As stated above by someone else, there is a lot of bricks in a chimney, an awful lot. I gave them a bottle of Scotch as a bonus as it was a huge learning curve for me.

Buzzer.

Well said Buzzer (.......it was a huge learning curve for me......)
It is amazing how much dust will be created, and how sore hands will get handling so many bricks - assuming "the team" are not labourers.
SWMBO will not be happy (for weeks:mad: ) if good defences are not created.

As suggested by others, be VERY aware of all cavities created by the demolition - roof, ceiling, walls, and possibly the floor can all be effected and will need progressive work if habitation is a concern. Think: rain, wind, storm, dust, birds,cats, possums, insulation, loose battens, as you proceed ..................... you can hardly go wrong, eh?

Have 'her' agree your protective measures are adequate before starting - this will reduce the sting.

soth