On May 31, 2:20 pm, Tim Decker wrote:
On 31 May, 13:01, adder1969 wrote: Hi, I have a chimney that runs through the middle of my house.

Any other ideas? Just get someone in to do it?!

You could do what the owner of my first house did and just remove the
stack all the way throught the house and then support the external
stack using a steel section from an old bed! This had worked quite
well for many years, but did get picked up on the structural survey.

Alternately do it 'properly':- Get a structural engineer in to
calculate the type of beam you will need, at a cost of £500+. Then get
building regs approval from the local council. £200+ ??

I am in a similar quandary myself with my current house. The cost of
doing the actual work is relatively low, just doing it within the law
is going to add 150% to the cost.

Take the chimney down from the top. It is fairly straight forward to
remove the bricks. Just try not to kill anyone. Then close the hole
with felt and batons then tile it. Following the old batons makes it
fairly easy to do.

Check you can find similar tiles first though. It might be worth
leaving it open for the few days it will take to do the job.

Then just get into the loft and start pulling the brick or blocks off
and passing them down. Don't stack too many in there. You'd be best
getting a friend to give you an hand. It's going to be messy though,
so plenty of fly sheets. And maybe a spray bottle to lay the dust. Try
getting as many out through the roof as is possible

It might be worth taking care with the bricks as they could prove
useful one day. But just chuck em out the window if not.

Balancing the chimney on old beds, bicycles and packing crates is
downright deadly.