Chimney Works

As started on another thread, though I'd post an update but feeling guilty at hijacking someone else's thread! To recap:-

Feltwell said:

This is a normal view of Feltwell Towers:-



But today it looks more like this:-



As this scary beastie is getting some much needed love & attention:-



Now the crown was in a right old mess, flaunching all shot, and it turns out the 2 chimney pots were just supported on some very corroded and thin iron bars :shock:

This was the crown halfway through today:-



In my case, as you can see, it's 4 separate pieces of stone. The 2 larger ones are 'kin heavy, to give it a technical term - so with no easy to hire mobile cranes in years gone by, I'd suggest it's unlikely yours was one piece. Took 2 of us on proper scaffold to lift the edge stones off and rebed them on lime mortar.

Pots now back on and supported on the galvanised steel bars you can see, flaunching now on. I would take a picture of it looking all lovely and finished, but of course in this heat it's all swathed in wet hessian now. It's crackin' flags here today - by'eck it's hot.

Now the crown is rebuilt, next job is lots of repointing and cutting out and replacing deteriorated bricks on the rest of the stack.

Nice view from the scaffold though - can see for miles.

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Feltwell said:

Here's the chimbley crown hopefully set to withstand a good few years of wind, rain, sun, ice & pigeon poo without further attention:-


online image hosting

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So, chimney is now done - have gone from this:-






Via this - about 25 bricks in total had to be cut out & turned round or replaced:-







To this:-





Will take a proper overall picture tomorrow once the scaffold is down. Give it a couple of years to weather a bit and it should look great.

Hopefully, this will cure the damp in the stack - the ceiling in the room below has damp marks. Roof is definitely watertight, but on doing the crown we found where water had been getting into the stack - plus all the bad pointing can't have been helping.

The mortar we used was the premixed coloured lime mortar from Lime Green - so easy to use, just put it in a plasterer's bucket and add water and mix it with a power mixer, just like you would for gypsum plaster. Not cheap at £20 for a 25kg bag but very easy & nice to work with, and I know I can get a consistent colour in future. Helps for me that they're only about 20 minutes away, but they'll do deliveries nationwide.

https://www.lime-green.co.uk/products/lime-mortar/natural-lime-mortar

No peace for the wicked - This one is next, but the bricks are in much better condition here. You can see from here the flaunching is shot.

That looks fantastic Feltwell. Judging by the different coloured brick it looks like Feltwell towers had a complete chimney refit some were in the past? A question on your scaffolding, how did you anchor it to the masonry? Here in Canada it has to be secured to the structure every section that goes up. That’s a lot of anchors holes that need to be repaired.

Thank you!

The bricks are all original (or close-to-original reclaims now I've changed a load of damaged ones) - typical show-off Victorians, all the bits you can see from outside are posh, all that is more hidden from the world is cheaper & utilitarian. So the front of the house and the top of the chimneys are built with a higher-quality facing brick, the side and rear of the house and the bottom of the chimney with a cheaper common brick.

My neighbour's house has the side done in the better quality facing brick as well as they are side-on to another road, so it's more visible.

Scaffolding - I *hate* putlogs, the fittings that get hammered in to the mortar joints, they do so much damage. Scaffolders here will often try to use them but if you tell them that you don't want them, they will build a free-standing scaffold, which is what I have here. It's wrapped around the chimney so it can't go anywhere unless the chimney goes to!

It is partially supported on the roof - scaffold boards laid across the roof, then poles bearing weight onto those. When it comes down you have to check carefully for any broken tiles before it comes down completely! Should be OK here though, the Scaffolders were careful and the tiles are all good, only 10 years old.

Another quality job at Feltwell Towers and something - I’ll bet - that will bring a smile to your face every time you look up, and quite right too. It’s a pretty impressive stack!

As for putlogs, we’ve had lots of scaffolding over the past decade or so but never was it fixed into the walls (thank goodness). Perhaps their use depends on the nature of the scaffolding? Like yours, our scaffolding always seemed to ‘wrap around’ something, whether it was a chimney or right around three sides of the house, so the possibility of it toppling over was pretty much zero. I can see their benefit for a simple one-dimensional tower-type scaffold that sits against a wall, but we’ve never had anything so simple. I guess each scaffold assembly is judged on its own merits.

One thing I did notice with the last bit of scaffolding we had (last year) was that someone came out to check it every Monday and write out a new ‘ticket’ confirming it was safe. That had never happened before and some of the previous scaffolding was up for a few years at a time. I don’t know whether this is a result of recent new legislation or whether the previous scaffold companies were more lax, where it was signed off when first built but not thereafter.

That looks excellent. I need my chimneys rebuilding at the top too, but I'm holding off as I don't know any good brickies. Are your guys close enough to Birmingham to travel? I also want 2 velux windows installed which I could do myself but would rather pay someone good, do you have any recommendations please?

Fantastic repairs as usual Feltwell, wouldnt expect anything less from you!

PP, if its anything like his bay window I suspect he carried out the work himself.

As regards to the scaffolding I know when I had 4 lifts on my property non of it was anchored to the masonry, where they could they hooked around a window opening but that was all. All I know is that it was as solid as a rock and I had some serious weight on it

Thank you all!

Craig89 said:

PP, if its anything like his bay window I suspect he carried out the work himself.

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Ahh no, I cheated a bit this time. Whilst I was very hands on and was busy cutting bricks and cleaning masonry and lots of other jobs to support the work, I had a bricklayer in - I realised that I was never going to get enough time to do it all myself, and having the scaffolding up is quite disruptive (blocks the driveway). Repointing isn't that hard but it is very time consuming, and a skilled brickie will be a *lot* faster than me.

He came from a recommendation from here actually - remember Old Lawns Farmhouse? It's not too far from me:-

http://oldlawnsrenovate.blogspot.com/2013/10/the-restoration-week-twelve.html

Stuart from there gave me the details. 5 years on and the brickie concerned has moved on and is now a project manager for a contractor, but he's just bought his first house and is happy to work weekends to get some extra cash in. He'd done a lot of lime work for Phillips & Curry, who are a well respected contractor that do a lot of historic building work, so his background is ideal - and he's a nice chap to boot, and only lives about 30 minutes away from me.

PP, would he travel to Birmingham? Not sure - bit of a trek, he's in Oswestry. I'll ask if you like but you'd need to wait, he'll be fully occupied here until the frosts start, and probably back again here as soon as the danger passes next spring - I'm going to repoint the whole house, that chimney was the worst bit but it all needs doing. He might know someone in Brum though.

Scaffolding - I think the putlogs are used as a way of using less scaffolding as much as anything else, when we first moved in and had the roof done, unbeknownst to me the scaffolders used them on the side of the house - no vertical poles on the side next to the brickwork then. They also started trying to use them on the close jointed front elevation until they realised they were causing damage :roll: - so that's the cause of a few bricks I need to replace. At least they stopped after a couple when they realised they were causing damage!

This time round I've found a great local scaffolder, a very experienced chap who's set up his own small business up - knows his stuff, the scaffold is rock solid and built perfectly for the job. The central stack will be a lot trickier so I'll see how he gets on with that.

Shame as Oswestry is 30 minutes in the opposite direction to me! I'm sure there is someone closer but I will only use recommended tradespeople now as I have had no success with anyone who hasn't been recommended.

It is difficult finding good trades people. I like to do as much stuff myself as possible and, although it takes longer, you quite often do a better job. Now dont get me wrong there are some very skilled trades people about but unfortunatly there are a lot of not so too

I do almost everything myself, but I'm not superman, and this is one job I wold like to palm off if I can!!!

Scaffold down, so a chance to stand back and see it properly. Took a full day to clean it all but worth it I think, got all the mortar staining off the bricks, even though it has left it looking maybe a bit too clean! Give it a year or so and it'll weather back down again nicely. I'm pleased with the result, hopefully that is the last attention it needs for a good number of years.

Looks fantastic Feltwell!!

So, onto Chimbleys number 2 & 3 - this being number 2:-



Flaunching looks fine, don't know why I've bothered really :shock:



Edge stones for the crown are loose and need to come off and be re-bedded.

Brickwork below is in much better shape, no bricks require replacement, but pointing is all bad - clearly been leaking for many years as well, soot stained bricks in evidence on the neighbour's side especially. Lots of bad patch pointing in sand & cement, but seems to be mostly very shallow and easy to get out.







About 3 years ago, our neighbour had scaffolding put up there for getting a chimney lined - it's a shared stack - didn't say anything to us or ask if I wanted to take a look, he was that kind of person. Anyway, seems that his workers smeared about half an inch of sand and cement over the top of the original knackered flaunching on his side - so of course that is all now breaking up.

Fortunately new neighbour is much more amenable and is happy to go halves on the rebuild cost - he's been up there with me to see it and he's said he'd rather the whole top was stripped back and rebuilt, which is great, that's what it needs. Stupid to do one side only. It's still costing me more than him as he's only paying for the extra bit of scaffolding to get round his side of the stack, but I'm OK with that, it was my idea to begin with and the scaffolding is also accessing other areas for me.

Feltwell check your inbox.

Bit late in on this one but, as you would expect it's to do with lead... 8) I would have fitted a lead capping and flashing on the two sloping shoulders on the chimney. You mention that there's staining on the ceiling of the bedroom below which I suspect is due to the rather nice design of these shoulders whose main purpose seems to be to direct water down into the stack rather than shed it. Too late now though....

While you are on the other chimbleys I would consider fitting a lead damp course under the flaunching with the lead dressed up inside each pot to help divert any moisture away from the internal structure. This damp course should be painted with a coating of bituminous paint to prevent unsightly staining on the brickwork below.

Just saying, that's all... 8)

Hi Doug

Do you know something about lead then? :wink: :wink: :lol:

All very valid comments!

The sloping shoulders were indeed a consideration for lead. Decided not to in the end for 4 reasons:-

- We found a definite leak, complete with water visibly running inside, in the crown of that chimney - now fixed

- Pointing on the shoulders was dreadful - new pointing should be much better at keeping the water out. Bricks are very hard and smooth and relatively impervious.

- It's not too bad to get up there again - could probably add leadwork to the shoulders off a scaffold tower (which I have)

- Availability of Quinn (the leadworker I use for everyone else's benefit) - he's a great bloke and the quality of his work is A1, but he's hard to pin down to a date. I've been waiting about 4 months for him to do my porch roof as it is! He has a plumbing contract on a hospital that just seems to be lasting forever and taking up all his time. In the meantime, the scaffold needed to come down.

Interestingly, another identical house to mine on the other side of my town has roofing tiles on those slopes, so someone else has had the same thoughts.

Lead damp course on the latest chimney - I agree, just not going to get time to get Quinn in to do it and haven't the skill to do it myself. There's not so much of a damp problem with that chimney - just a little stain on the corner of the ceiling below that only appears after very wet weather - and that's with a whacking great hole in the flaunching, straight into the flue, directly above.

What you're saying is very valid but it is "belt and braces", I'm hoping that belt or braces will do the job in this case. Not like me, usually belt and braces is how I like to do things....and I would in this case to be honest, it's just the practicalities of getting it done.

If I'm moaning on here in a year or two that I've redecorated and the damp has come through again, you have my full permission to say "I told you so!" :wink:

As if I would... :evil: :lol:

There's nothing like quality workmanship from years gone by to contend with.

Just finished getting all the old flaunching and 8 chimney pots off, intact as well, bit nerve wracking as a couple of the neighbour's ones were cracked to begin with - plus loose, and very large & heavy, edge stones to not knock off.

Whoever lined 2 of their flues for their woodburners, "repaired" the original (knackered) lime flaunching with squirty foam before putting an inch of sand and cement over the top to hide it all. :roll:

That was about 3 years ago, all cracked and horrible by now of course. Still, made getting it off easier I suppose.

Good news is now all the tops of the flues are exposed, one end in particular is all damp & horrible , so happy now that that was where the water was getting in.

One of the lanterns for an octagonal tower on a castle I've been working on for the last two years and ten months...nothing to do with chimneys I know but there...

I should add that the leadwork under the merlons was fitted by the masons :roll: We'll try to tidy it up when we fit the top of wall code 6 lead weatherings.

Very nice as always Doug!