Unsealed the fireplace

9 years ago

I finally unsealed my fireplace, or better to say, I unsealed the chimney because there is no fireplace. I'm disappointed but not surprised by what I found:

This house was built around 1900. It was possibly renovated in the 1960s and again in the 1990s. Is it possible the mantel and surround were added in the 1960s?

I assume that a coal heat stove sat in front and vented up through the hole. The hole cover comes off and there is what looks some soil in there - like ground soil.

What do people do when they want to make these things functional? Do they make attractive gas replicas similar to the heating unit that was there?

There is a crawl space below this room and the chimney goes up through the bedroom above and then to the outside. You can see where an electrical line was put through there and HVAC vertical ducting on the right.

This post was edited by graywings on Sun, Aug 17, 14 at 19:41

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Comments (9)

jackfre
9 years ago
Yes, there are many manuf of gas fireplaces. Try Heat & Glo for one. It is un likely that the masonry chimney is functional. That old a chimney will not have a liner and being so old is probably the reason it was originally modified. You could call a chimney sweep, but make sure it is a Sweep Certified by the Ch Sweep Guild. Otherwise go to a local Hearth shop to get some ideas. Take some photos to help them advise.
lazy_gardens
9 years ago
It had a small stove for winter that was removed in summer.

Making it "functional" ... you need to make sure the chimney is sound, then decide what replacement stove you want. Or install a really shallow gas or electric faux fireplace with the appropriate venting.
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I don't have one and I can't get one because: my chimney is on the outside of my house (so it would be a waste of money), my floor won't support it, and my wallet can't support the upgrades required for it (floor and chimney). However, if I were building a new home I would get one for the center of the house and possibly an insert for other sections of the house where you need faster heat and don't want to have to rely on your central hvac. Also, when you design your air returns make sure you take the heat from your wood burning appliance into account since you can use your hvac fan to distribute it around your house if it's in a good location. I won't go on in detail because I'm no expert but there are plenty of stories on this forum. As for the chimney... There are lots of problems with a chimney being on the outside of your house. It's terribly inefficient since you really can't get the masonry mass hot due to the majority of it being in an uninsulated space and that will cause it to cool down extremely quickly and possibly cause a downdraft when your coals aren't hot enough to sustain the upward draft. Read through this forum and the one on hearth.com and you'll get all the info you need. I would definitely consider calling in an engineer with experience in 1) masonry heaters, 2) air distribution and 3) plumbing (because some people run hot water pipes through masonry heaters for radiant heating - BONUS!!!). Don't work with the architect alone, make sure you have some experts in there somewhere. It may cost you more up front, but I think it's definitely worth it on the back end. Oh yeah, are you going to get the house pre-wired for an alarm? If so, good idea and that's a discussion for another forum. ;-)
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Since your fireplace is not against an outside wall, that does pose complications. A direct vent fireplace would be complicated and costly to install. But you might consider a direct vent gas stove, either cast iron or soapstone. These are free-standing units that have to be some distance from combustible surfaces (the wall behind and on either side of the stove), and they have to stand on a noncombustible surface such as brick, tile, or slate. There would be a chimney that goes up from the rear of the stove to the ceiling, through the ceiling, and continuing on through the roof to the outside. If yours is a 2-story house, the cost would of course be higher than if it is a on-story house, and you'd have to figure out where the chimney would occupy space in your upper floor(s), peferrably in a closet where it would not be seen. A friend of mine had such a system in their 2-story house, but it was planned before construction, whereas yours would be retrofitted. All of this sounds complicated and expensive, and probably is, which is probably why the previous owner put in ventless. Although electric would not give you the kind of performance you get from gas, I would not dismiss it. Some electric units are pretty good. Just stay away from gas ventless.
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I have asthma and cannot use any burning fuel. Briefly considered a corn or pellet stove until some honest user admitted that they get a whoosh of smoke occasionally. Then I looked into gas. I can't use unsealed gas logs because the combustion products set off my asthma and even having a pilot light burning in some B-and-B rooms we have stayed at has sent us looking for the owners to turn them off. For me, a SEALED GAS unit was the only solution for using a combustion unit to add heat to a room. Not to mention, (as someone noted above) that using a regular gas log will actually suck your heated (by furnace) air right up the chimney, costing you more $ for heating than the BTUs you add to the house by burning the gas logs in the first place. Look in the research, it is all over the place. The only gas fireplace that adds heat is the sealed unit, which would start at $3000 for my fireplace size. But for $600 I got an electric Classic Flame fireplace with LED flashing lights in the logs and embers that simulate real burning, the flames that DIY GUY 419 is getting, a flickering downlight like his that makes the whole thing look real, and real SOUNDS too. I am glad the real sounds are no longer offered. You memorize the crackle pattern too fast and it gets on your nerves. Every time one of the embers in your logs spark, you hear the "pop" and you hear crackles and the wind at the top of the chimney, too , with the volume on high! I love my fake fireplace. I am not sure I will have the $ for the sealed gas one in this lifetime, and the heater keeps me warm. My family say it adds ambiance, compared to an empty black hole, which is my only alternative.
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akamainegrower
9 years ago
What looks like ground soil is almost certainly granular creosote fom wood or possibly coal burning. There should be a cleanout door at the base of the chimney where you can remove the accumulated material.

No matter what you decide to do, the first step would be to have the chimney cleaned and inspected. Liners can be added to old chimneys. Some are stainless steel, others are cast in place. The issue is complicated in your case because the photo shows flammable vertical framing members right up against the chimney on both sides. This would be a violation of present day building codes for solid fuel chimneys, I'm not sure about gas appliances. Then there's the electrical line and the lathing...

Another reason for inspection - preferably one that uses a camera - is to check that there are no other openings to the chimney on the second floor if the chimney is currently covered. People frequently put cast iron covers over the openings, then built over them just as you have on the first floor. This is very dangerous. The iron covers can rust over time and fail, even drop out of the opening altogether, creating a very serious fire hazard and a path for CO to enter the living space.
graywings123
Original Author
9 years ago
Thanks for the responses. Can anyone tell me what this likely looked like originally? Would that mantel have been there with the small stove in front of it?

I have the same mantel in two other rooms of the house.

And just to be clear. I have no plans to use the chimney other than to run air tubes for a direct vent stove of some kind.
PRO
Joseph Corlett, LLC
9 years ago
I doubt that mantle was added, especially if you have others that match.

Just for kicks, strip off a bit of paint. You may find some quartersawn oak, you may find it was originally painted.
sombreuil_mongrel
9 years ago
My house was renovated in 1906 with similar brick chimneys and mantels placed as "corner" fireplaces (and presumably coal stoves) which replaced the stone end-chimneys with wood-burning fireplaces, which obviously would have been way cooler, had they survived.

Casey

This post was edited by sombreuil_mongrel on Mon, Aug 18, 14 at 14:23
NHBabs z4b-5a NH
9 years ago
We had a similar situation of a bricked up opening for an old stove with an unsafe chimney, but in our case there was another similar opening for a stove in the room behind it. (Our house was built in the 1860's.) We ended up taking out the old chimney and all the stove openings that fed into it (4 total) and rebuilding the chimney with a Rumford (shallow) fireplace that faced into the living room and just a sheetrock panel in the bedroom behind it with the mantels intact.

Here's the opening with the masons getting ready to start the fireplace with the masonry support for the chimney rebuilt from the cellar to the first floor, looking from the bedroom into the living room.

This post was edited by nhbabs on Mon, Aug 18, 14 at 21:29
NHBabs z4b-5a NH
9 years ago
And here just finishing up the firebox on the living room side. The mantel in the bedroom was taken out temporarily, but was replaced after the chimney and fireplace were rebuilt.
selcier
9 years ago
If you don't want to go to the expense of re-building a chimney/firebox, you can add a gas freestanding fireplace. We have an insert by this company (Valor - in the link) but almost all the work was taken care of by the company who installed it. They can out to inspect the chimney, took out an old liner, put in a new one, capped it, ran gas extension lines and installed the unit itself. They are pretty historically correct and cast iron.

Here is a link that might be useful: Valor fireplaces

Unsealed the fireplace

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Unsealed the fireplace

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