Cost of rebuilding a 16 flue chimney on a pary wall

[Nigel Watts]

My builder has quoted £14k, which I may be able to split half way with my neighbour. The chimney is about six foot high at each end, decreasing to a foot or two in the centre with the rise of the roof (It runs for most of the depth of the house). It will be of brick, plastered in lime, with a corbel course at the top below which will be a moulding run in situ. Chimney pots will be reused if in good enough nick. All this is subject to getting listed building consent.

I have no idea if this is reasonable. Any thoughts?

 

[Feltwell]

The vast majority of the cost on this job will be labour - I presume he'll re-use as much as possible of what he takes down, and do you already have scaffolding up that will do the job? Has he given any indication of how long the job is likely to take, and how many people will be on it?

I was just thinking it would give you an idea of what day rate they are charging, and hence more of a sense of if that is reasnoble.

 

[jocelyn plummer]

ParTy wall?

 

[Nigel Watts]

 

[MdB]

Wow! You could play one hell of a tune on that. It would take some puff though.

(and I can understand why you want to rebuild.)

 

[Lime]

To be honest I don't think it looks that bad.
The top need to be redone but the rest of it looks reasonably sound.

 

[Feltwell]

Until the render is off and the extent of any problems can be seen, I don't see how anyone could possibly give an accurate quote - as they have no idea how big a problem it is and what needs to be rebuilt.

Unless of course they take the approach of "assume the whole thing needs doing, work out a decent margin on that, then if less needs doing I get a nicer holiday this year". But I can't believe any builder would ever do that. :roll:

If clambering around on the roof with a lump hammer and cold chisel is not your thing Nigel, is it worth paying a day's labour just to get the render taken off so the true extent of the problem can be seen? Then get 3 quotes, if you have 3 builders you can trust to do a decent job of course using the right materials.

That is a beast of a chimney stack though. Makes our 8 pot central stack look weedy!

£14k seems a hell of a lot to me. We replaced our entire roof, all new tiles, new dormer window, new fascia boards and fitted 3 skylights for £16k, including scaffolding, several skips and some chimney repairs! Maybe worth a PM to a certain gentleman residing in South Wales - even with travelling and accomodation costs it could work out a lot cheaper, and you'd have confidence it was done right.

 

[Nigel Watts]

One thing I won't be doing is using my neighbour's builders:

 

[Feltwell]

Hmm, nice concrete interlocking tiles as well. Very in-keeping.

 

[Nigel Watts]

Planning permission has finally come through. Astonishingly the number of comments and complaints received following the full consultation process over my application to rebuild my chimney stack exactly as it is at present was zero. Whoever would have predicted that?

 

[MdB]

Just out of interest, why did you need planning?

 

[Nigel Watts]

The house is Grade II listed and in a conservation area. The CO 's office told me I had to put in a full application.

 

[MdB]

The house is Grade II listed and in a conservation area. The CO 's office told me I had to put in a full application.

I guess if the CO says jump then you jump...

A rebuild is a bit more than a like for like repair so I can sort of see that a LBC would be required. However full planning seems strange. Your current and proposed drawings must have been near identical.