I live in a 2 storey end of terrace victorian house which was once a
corner shop.
In the downstairs front room where the shop area was, rather than a
chimney breast there are two brick piers about 60 cm apart , each one
about 35 cm wide protruding from the wall about 12 cm they were in bad
shape(crumbley old mortar)- not structural (any more) during the
conversion I tidied them up and re-plastered. A vertical crack has
appeared on the left hand pier.
Directly above this ,upstairs, is a proper chimney breast 34 cm deep
also with a verical crack on left, a good 4mm at the top, and some
other cracks above it. The roof design is a London pitch (with a
central valley box gutter running along the middle of the house), the
chimney breast tapers into the party wall at the top about a 30 cm
before the underside of the ceiling. There is a chimney stack above
sitting directly on the party wall serving my house and next doors.
Logic tells me that the explanation for the cracks is that the upstairs
breast is poorly supported so I want to rermove it, as the stack above
sits on the party wall and the breast is not directly supporting it
can I remove the breast without touching the stack?
Any advice on this would be great.