Rip out the fireplace?

[Tony Arnold]

I've had a few tradesmen in to quote of replacing my piers and levelling the house. The problem is that the fireplace is also sinking, and dragging the house down with it. Two pier specialists have advised the best thing to do is remove the fireplace altogether before repiering and levelling. The problem is, the fireplace is sizeable, and a great feature in my old home. Has anyone had any experience along these lines? I'm also looking into Uretek - the resin-injecting people - in the hope that's an option.

[Make it work]

If it is a great feature, then do what you can to keep it but if it is wrecking the rest of the house it may have to be sacrificed.

You may be able to replace it with another, possibly a gas log or Jetmaster that uses a metal flue rather than the brick chimney.

[Buzza]

We have a timber framed asbests house, and about six years back, I noticed the chimney had had an argument with the house. They had drifted apart. A year later I noticed it had worsened and the chimney was going to move into next door.

I had a quote from a bloke with an expensive looking Yellow Pages ad, for $4,000.00 dollars. He said two men would take five days to do the removal and they were Mediteranean experts. In desperation, I rang another bloke in the next suburb who did demolitions and he said he would have a look and quote. I lined him up and a builder for the same day. The demo bloke quoted $500.00 to knock down and remove. He would do it in one morning he said, with himself and his son.

Of course it rained all day on the day, the demo blokes shop was robbed of lots of tools during the night, and he was two hours late and turned up alone. Everything was going wrong I thought. Up went the scaffolding, and he climbed it with a brick hammer and bolster. His son then turned up and backed up a truck to my garage door. He climbed onto the garage roof, and painstakingly carried each brick to the truck and dropped them off of the roof into the truck. After a while, the scaffold came down, and they worked from the ground, eventually getting out the jack-hammer.

I had no idea just how big the cement base was, cripes it was huge. By lunch time, the agreed time, they were gone with the chimney and not one piece of gravel left behind. The builder worked in the rain that day and clad the wall up, and then placed new floor boards where they were needed.

Two very different quotes eh??

[Buzza]

By the way, we found an underground creek near my chimney, that had bee eroding it for fifty years.

This means you will never know what has caused yours to move until it is gone. We found a washed out cave under the garage, and have backfilled that by hand.


We had already put in a gas fire before all of this, so we only needed a new flue, and a "stain -your-own" fireplace surround, which is another story.

[autogenous]

Picture?

[Ronaldo451]

Is the 'feature' aspect of the fireplace you want to retain its looks or functionality?

If you want to retain a working fireplace you already have a few suggestions, however, if you just want to keep the looks it is a bit easier. I removed one working fireplace (post war texture brick surrounded Cosy fire) and replaced it with an early 1900's tiled firebox and mantle, which is for decoration only. Therefore did not need to retain chimney, flue etc. It looks great, so good I installed 2 other matching faux fireplaces in other rooms to maintain the theme!

[echnidna]

Is the 'feature' aspect of the fireplace you want to retain its looks or functionality?

If you want to retain a working fireplace you already have a few suggestions, however, if you just want to keep the looks it is a bit easier. I removed one working fireplace (post war texture brick surrounded Cosy fire) and replaced it with an early 1900's tiled firebox and mantle, which is for decoration only. Therefore did not need to retain chimney, flue etc. It looks great, so good I installed 2 other matching faux fireplaces in other rooms to maintain the theme!

That sounds interesting can you post a pic please?

[Tony Arnold]

Hi,

I've attached some pics of the fireplace. The house has really low clearance, so I can't get any photos of the footings, but they're big, brick and in bad condition. I should have added earlier - we're not attached to the facade at all, and figured we would either do up the fireplace as a decorative feature or install a nice gas fireplace. So it's not the fire-related features of the fireplace I'm worried about...it's the work and possible damage involved in removing it. You'll see in the photo of the ceiling that a) the ceiling is a feature we don't want to damage unnecessarily and b) cracking is very evident and has been filled in in the past. Has anyone had any experience with something similar?