How can you tell whether a fireplace is useable

[STUART27]

Hello folks

This will sound like a stupid question, but here goes...

I have a 4 storey townhouse, built around 1881. Most of the rooms have a working fireplace. The basement has 2 main rooms. The largest room has the biggest fireplace and this is the one I use most. The room next door is being used as a study and has a fireplace opening, but it looks to have been modified fairly recently. I looked up into the recess and there is a staggered arrangement of bricks and I can feel a draft. The only issue is that there are two pipes running across the chimney, but I think these are redundant water pipes. I'd really like to install a wood burning or multi-fuel stove in the recess, as the basement could do with additional heating. Is there an easy way to confirm if I can use the chimney or do I need to call in an expert?

Both basement rooms originally had heating and cooking stoves in them. Neighbours still have theirs in place.


The room immediately above the study is the kitchen, which has had the fireplace removed and boxed in. It now has kitchen units where the fireplace used to be

Any pointers appreciated.



Stuart

 

[middi]

In theory a well construted 1880,s built chimney should be serviceable as originally inteded if it is swept clean.

The danger could be that some of the flue chambers for the various chimneys may have been made redundant by previous owners, armed with this unfortunate hindsight these previous owners may have also utelised these chambers to pass cables, pipes and plastics etc...through the voids.

Initially you could have your chimeys swept, that will give an indication if there are blockages, also investigate as far as you can with a torch to see if there are obvious obstacles in the way,

If you are reasonably satisfied that any flue chambers you want to use are obstacle free you can light a small " smokey" fire to check how well is the uprdraught and check for smoke leakage.

Realistically there is not much more you can do, if you want to fully evaluate the condition of the unused flues, the only sure way is to run an optical camera in their voids.

 

[STUART27]

thanks for the advice.

I took a further look with a torch and from what I can see, there seems to be a break in the bricks, leading into the adjoining (redundant) chimney. I think this will be a problem. I did a limited smoke test and ended up with a room full of smoke so there is an obstacle somewhere. I won't give up there though. Luckily, I can borrow a 10m long video scope from work, so should be able to check remotely and see whether it's worth pursuing. Otherwise an electric stove looks to be the only realistic option.

Many thanks again.

stuart