Chimney CCTV Survey

Chimney CCTV Survey

Please scroll down to see more Chimney CCTV images with explanations of each of the images alongside them.

Our CCTV chimney specialist teams are able to locate quickly and efficiently, avoiding the need to “knock into” the chimney breast. We are able to offer solutions to rectify the issue using our chimney lining specialists.  Chimney CCTV surveys can be completed from the top of the pots down the chimney, but where scaffolding is not in place they are done from below through the fireplace, pushing them up through the chimney opening with the camera facing down.  Due to the camera being able to rotate 360 degrees and tilt 180 degrees the whole chimney flue can be viewed on screen.

There are many reasons why a Chimney CCTV survey would be completed including:

• Establish the area of a blockage and what is causing the blockage.
• Find the areas where there is a major failure of a flue, causing smoke leaking out of two or more pots or in rooms in the property, or smoke leaking into loft spaces.
• Checking the 45 degree bends to see if a flexible liner will be able to pass through.
• Checking flues to see if the chimney will need lining
• Inspecting chimneys to see which lining system would be best.
• Examining the chimney as it has been blocked up for years.
• Inspecting a flexible liner to see if the liner has been fitted correctly.
• To establish the condition of the flaunching at the top of the stack, making sure the pots are safely fitted.

Reasons for blockages:

• Often chimneys suffer from birds nesting in them; these nests can fall down and get stuck on the bends of the flue.
• Cement being poured down from the top of the roof, often when unprofessional trades man want to dispose of left over cement or render they pour it down the chimney blocking up the flue.
• Loft conversions where the chimney breast was used to support the RSJ.
• Restricted bends may have a soot deposit build up that is stopping the flue liner going down.
• Bricks from the flue or mid-feathers that separate the flue can be dislodged and block the flue.
• Neighbours breaking though the party wall when installing their fireplace.
• Poorly functioning chimneys

People who use the CCTV service:

• Members of the public
• Party wall surveyors
• Builders
• Architects
• Landlords when renting out properties
• Contractors
• Managing agents

To arrange your CCTV chimney inspection survey, call us on 020 8942 8881 or email us through our book a survey page.

Image 1 and 2 – This is the state of the art CCTV camera head being inserted down the chimney flue by a Cast Iron Fireplace Company HETAS installer.

Image 3 – This image was taken looking through into the chimney where we have knocked into the flue to remove a blockage.  The blockage is just below the opening, we used the chimney CCTV camera to calculate the exact location of the blockage.  On this occasion it was on a bend in between the ground and first floor, so we had to knock into the chimney above the skirting boards and manually remove the blockage.  At some point in the past concrete had been poured down the chimney in error and was stopping the flexible liner going down the chimney.  Due to the difficult location of the blockage we used the chimney CCTV equipment to see what we were doing and remove the obstruction.

Image 4 – This is a picture of the obstruction talked about in image 3.  As you can see the smooth surface in the middle of the image should show the 45 degree bend in the flue, what you can see is the concrete that has been poured from the top which has created the blockage in the flue.

Image 5 – In this flue you can see the condition of the inside of the chimney is very poor.  The original lime mortar (parging) has completely disintegrated and the mortar joints have corroded very badly.  Flues are lined with 'parging', a render mix which used to prevent flue gases escaping through mortar joints. Parging is always roughly applied and is usually of the same mix as the brick mortar because it is done as the chimney stack was built from the ground up. Various other mixes would be found in older and larger flues.  Industry standards once recommended a mix of one part lime to three parts sand with ox hair, mixed at the rate of one pound of hair to three cubic feet of mortar.  An alternative mix comprised one part lime to two parts sand and one part cow dung.

Image 6 – A common size of flue is 9” x 9”, a brick width by a brick width.  The flues within a chimney that are serving one fireplace are separated by mid-feathers, a single course of bricks.  These midfeathers get damaged over the years because of moisture in the flue caused by a lack of ventilation, wrong fuels or insulation mixed with sulphates from flue gases makes the moisture acidic and this attacks the parging and then the mortar joints in between the midfeathers.  This image shows a case where the midfeathers has completely disintegrated and had fallen down the chimney.  This is when we were called in to rebuild them prior lining with the Eldfast lining system.

Image 7 – Looking down into the flue you can see the repaired midfeathers after rebuilding them from the side of the chimney; we then bricked up the side of the chimney stack ready for lining the chimney and fitting a chimney pot on top.  One main cause of moisture is open top chimney pots that don’t have cowls fitted to them.  Without a cowl on top, water will continue to ingress into the chimney and cause it to leak smoke into bedrooms and other parts of the house where the parging has deteriorated.  In this image you can see that the condition of both the flues suffer from the same defective mortar and both needed lining by our chimney lining HETAS installers.

Image 8 – Picture 8 shows a flexible liner fitted onto a woodburning stove that the owner said they hadn't had swept in 8 years!  You can see in the centre of the flue that the diameter had reduced down to about 10mm or 0.5".  He called us because he said that the chimney had stopped working and smoke kept on coming into the room, this has to be the one of the most dangerous examples of soot deposit build up we have come across.  The customer was burning mostly damp wood, which meant that the stove also did not get as hot as it should have done.  Had he started to burn dried wood, the flue temperatures would have increased enough to ignite the soot built up (also called Creosote).  An air starved, slow burning appliance produces relatively cool stack temperatures which is ideal for creosote formation.  Fireplaces and stoves burning smokeless fuels or properly seasoned wood produce roaring fires that either burned the creosote out or kept stacks temperatures above or around 250 degrees so that the gases escape without condensing.

Image 9 – What you can see in this image is the rear of the neighbour's fireplace coming into our customer's fireplace, through the party wall and into their builders opening.  This is the work of fireplace installations done by cowboy fitters who were definitely not HETAS registered installers.  Apart from stealing space from our customers fireplace opening this is a very dangerous thing to do. By doing it, the chimney stack had been weakened and could result in it moving and part of it falling down as there is no support there.  There was also no backfill to the sides of this clay fire back and we could see through to the neighbour's chimney as there was also nothing sealing the fireplace.  This would allow smoke to travel into our customer's house and pose a real risk of carbon monoxide poisoning which cause around 5 deaths a year!  Our advice is always having your stove; fireplace or lining system installed by a HETAS approved company or installer.  A cheaper quote is often a cheaper quote for a reason – because they don’t know what they are doing and won’t use the correct methods or materials to install your appliance.  About 15% of our work is rectifying badly and dangerously fitted wood burning stoves and fireplaces.