When we bought this place about three months ago, the disclosure statement said that the fireplace liner was cracked. Not to sound stupid, but what does that mean?

-- Sue (sulandherb@aol.com), January 09, 2002

Answers

It means don't use the fireplace until it's relined. There are stainless steel liners that can fit inside a masonary chimney or a good mason can reline it with tiles. I helped one build my chimney. I got the fun job of hauling blocks and tiles up! Quite an education which made me appreciate mine, NOT being a mason's!!

-- Ross (amulet@istar.ca), January 09, 2002.

There are clay flue pipes inside the brick, stone, whatever material used on the outside of the chimney. These crack. Sometimes, I believe, running a fireplace/ stove with out the use of a cap (a device that keeps water from entering the chimney cases the hot flues to get rapidly cooled by rain or snow, and crack- they give out. Mine are cracked. The first (tenative!) time I lit our woodstove, I was all over the chimney- in the attic, in the kitchen, feeling the cinder block outer wall of the chimney for hot spots. We are building a new chimney soon, but have used the cracked one for two years with out incident. The cracks are pretty small and the cinder blocks them selves are fairly good at isolating heat- they have hollows in each one, so my case might be different than yours. PS I also installed a carbon monoxide alarm to make sure of no leakage on that point. To install new liners, I have heard (I breifly thought about just replacing the liner, but the chimney is poorly situated and we are remodeling anyways, so a new one is the better desion here), One would knock out all the old flues by using a pipe or something and standing up on top of the roof and prying until all the flues had broken apart and fallen down. One would then- if this was feasible, clean the shards out through the access door common to the bottoms of most chimneys. By using burnable baling string, one would lower each new flue down into the chimney and seat them in place- letting the strings of each just burn up when the stove was lighted. Sounds like a pain, but an idea, none the less tha is cheaper than replacing the whole chimney.

-- Kevin in NC (Vantravlrs@aol.com), January 09, 2002.