Re: chimney breast removal

"spearatune" wrote
| Hi recently i have moved into a semi detached house with alot of
| potential

Oh dear :-)

You'll be staying here for a while then I take it?

| and i am enquiry about a chimney breast removal on the
| bottom floor upto the ceiling,the previous owners have made a
| cupboard into the chimney breast already and so all i want to do
| is take away the rest of the downstairs chimney breast,as they
| have taken some bricks away to put put the cupboard in i noticed
| the rest of the breast above the cupboard is supported with wooden
| supports,so my enquiry is, is it easy to take out the rest up to
| the ceiling and what permissions do i need and i would think it
| would have to be a steel lintel support above and not
| wood.I would appreciate any advice from anybody that would know.

The removal of the chimney brickwork by the previous owners should probably
have been the subject of a Building Regulations application. (If on a party
wall, Party Wall Act provisions may also apply.) If you tell your solicitor
about the alterations she/he can
specifically chase up whether this application was ever approved by the
council.

The chimney structure has to be properly supported for the first floor and
above, whether or not this was done when the ground floor brickwork was
taken out, using beams p[roperly integrated with the building structure. The
structural steelwork etc required for this should be designed by a
Structural Engineer[1] who has professional indemnity insurance and can sign
off the calculations to the satisfaction of Building Control. If the breast
is in a party wall then Party Wall Act provisions will prbably apply.

When you appoint a builder you should make it a condition of the contract
that the work is carried out to the satisfaction of your StructE and have
the StructE inspect the work before paying the builder. You really need the
StructE before the builder, because the StructE can prepare working dwgs and
specs against which you can invite builders to quote.

If it's a front-facing room you might want to arrange all access to the
works to be via the room window and an access tower, and access to the attic
through the ceiling of this room (you will probably need a new ceiling
anyway) rather than having builders traipsing through the rest of the house.

Removing the chimney breast without supporting the stack above is probably
the most common cause of "I did some DIY and the house fell down" stories,
and builders cannot be relied upon to do the job properly on their own
initiative.

Once the steelwork is in, removing the brickwork below is diyable.

Owain

[1] Listed under 'Structural Engineer' in Yellow Pages, conveniently next to
Steel. There is a "find a structural engineer" link from the professional
website,
www.istructe.org.uk but as engineers have to pay to be listed on that, it's
far from a complete listing.