Installing a woodburning or multifuel stove or a solid fuel fireplace is not a job for the DIY enthusiast.  When installing a woodburning stove there are many considerations that are often over looked.  Here are a few examples of dangerous things we have come across over the years.

1)      Holes in chimneys midfeathers Our chimney lining experts had to rebuild the midfeathers on this example as they were completely missing. The midfeathers are normally a single course of bricks that separate the flues within your chimney.  When these are missing, smoke will travel between the flues and the chimney will need to be lined properly after fixing them. Missing midfeathers are often caused by years of chimney usage but also can be due to a chimney that has been closed off and not used for many years, resulting in a damp chimney causing the mortar to fail.  Often when a stove or fireplace is reinstated, the expansion caused by the hot flue gases can make the mortar joints unstable and cause the midfeathers to start to leak or come loose.

We offer a Chimney CCTV inspection service to work out the exact location of any issues with in a chimney’s flue, and are able to suggest the appropriate lining system and procedure to make the chimney safe again.

On this example we had to “knock into the outside of the property and repair the midfeathers before bricking up and relining the chimney with the Eldfast ceramic lining system.

2)      Flexible liners that have not been joined to the stove pipe with the correct adapters. On this example the customer had to have a whole new liner installed as the bottom part of it had burnt away, the top had also not been connected properly using a pot hanger cowl.  If a flexible lining system is not installed with the correct parts, then the lining system will not be safe and could pose a real danger to those living in the property.

3)      Chimney stacks that need rebuilding prior to lining due to bad flaunching around the chimney pots. Leaking chimney stacks can be dangerous, as we all know, as the can leak smoke into the property or neighbours house.  One issue that is often over looked is the condition of the stack in general. If the chimney pots on your stack have little flaunching (this is the sand, cement and lime render that holds your pots in place), or the flaunching has deteriorated over the years it needs to be replaced.  If you do not have the flaunching done properly then water will ingress into the stack and over a relatively short amount of time this moisture will run into the chimney stack and the bricks will act like a sponge and absorb the rain water.  Once this happens the whole stack will become damp and the mortar that holds the bricks in place will fail, resulting in the example given, which shows a stack that has literally has fallen away.  You can see that a new pot had been fitted badly a few years before our arrival.  You can also notice the colour of the flaunching underneath is too yellow, meaning that the mix that was used contained too much sand and not enough cement and lime and was not strong enough.  If the mix was correct then the water would have not entered the chimney and the stack would have remained as strong as when it was originally built.

4)      Incorrect termination of a liner at the chimney pot When installing a lining system it is very important to stop any moisture coming into the chimney by using a cowl.  A cowl will stop moisture entering the lining system and will keep the condition of the stack and the liner strong and safe.  This example shows a vitreous flue pipe which should not be used within a chimney pot at the top, you can also see that soot has built up around the outside of the pipe and in-between the chimney pot.  Soot is a combustible material and if this met a spark, there is a very real danger that there could have been a chimney fire.

5)      Excessive soot build up inside a badly fitted lining system This has to be one of the worst examples we have come across of a lining system that has not been swept, we would guess that it has never been swept, which is extremely dangerous.  You can see that the internal diameter has been drastically reduced and has almost closed the flue system off.  The customer called us in because they had complained that the stove always emitted smoke into the room for the first hour or so.  When our chimney lining experts came to inspect with our specialist chimney CCTV equipment, we could not get the camera up into the flexible lining system and had to check from the roof to see if we could drop the camera down.  As you can see, what we found was a flue that had a very high buildup of soot for the whole length of the liner.  This customer was extremely lucky they did not have a chimney fire in their house.