Urgent! Advice needed on chimney.

[fancyyang]

Hi all,

I have an urgent question on chimney breast.

We recently made an offer to a Victorian terraced housed in London and are planning to exchange in the next 2 weeks. We just found out that some chimney breasts had been removed without the building regulation almost 20 years ago. The rear chimney breasts were removed in the ground floor living room and the first floor bedroom. The chimney breast is still visible on the second floor (loft conversion-turned bedroom) and so is the chimney stack intact on the roof. The surveyor said he cannot establish whether there is adequate support. The vendor doesn’t know either coz this happened before he bought it.

I spoke to a couple of builders and they told me that assuming these are not properly supported, to re-support chimney it would cost around £3k per chimney which would involve adding steel beams (with some other jargons I don’t fully understand).

My questions are:

1. How many chimneys needed to be supported in this case? I have a chimney on the loft and a chimney stack on the roof, I am assuming that the chimney stack is supported by the chimney below (loft) so supporting the chimney on the loft bedroom also supports the stack on the roof, or do they need to be supported separately and count as two?

1. Is £3k cost of supporting each chimney reasonable in London? Am I right to think that I also need to hire the structural engineer and pay for the council building control, that sounds like another £1k on top of it?

1. Do we have a strong case to expect the vendor to pay for the fix (assuming it’s not properly supported)? We uppered our offer substantially to match a competing offer, and the agreed offer is quite close to the guide price. At the time I didn't know about chimney issue. Also I feel that if I don’t deal with the chimney, it will haunt me when I resell the property coz the buyer would expect me to sort this out.

What are your thoughts are on these? Thank you in advance.

the weight is supported down through the structure, so originally the stack sat on top of the loft chimney and that sat on the first floor and that sat on the ground floor chimney breast and that sat on the ground.

So you need to underpin at the point that the underneath is missing, or else remove the loft and chimney stack.

I have no idea about cost, but things which come up in the survey like this should allow you to negotiate the price down, or insist they are sorted before you buy.

It may be that you can get a structural engineer to remove carpets and take up floorboards and look for supports, before you make the decision.

but if the other people who offered are keen, they may be prepared to take the hit or take the risk, and you will loose the sale.

After that length of time you won't face any enforcement action if Building Control are unaware the chimney breasts were removed.

Obviously the chimney breast in the loft and the stack on the roof have stayed put for 20 years, but it would be prudent to get everything properly checked and undertake any remedial work necessary.

I would get a structural surveyor to check properly - the vendor's agreement will be needed to allow for proper checks to be carried out, e.g. removing part of any plaster boarding, taking up floor coverings and floorboards to see if there is a steel, etc. and taking it from there. If the vendor won't agree to this then I'd suggest discounting the agreed purchase price by the cost of the possible remedial work.

There was a DIY SOS big build where they started and discovered the upstairs chimney breast was unsupported. Had been fine for years, but in order to do the big build they had to underpin it.
I suspect it is common in Victorian terraces to be honest.

If you are using a mortgage to buy the house the lender may require an indemnity insurance to cover the unlikely scenario that building control were to enforce action. Typically a condition of the indemnity insurance is that you cannot approach building control. So even if you fix the problem, you may not be allowed to get it signed off. The indemnity insurance can be passed to future buyers, but the situation of having works with no BC sign off would continue. Ask your solicitor.

But if you just sorted out the problem, building control wouldn't have to be involved - that is, if you removed the loft stack and chimney so there was no longer anything that needed support signing off.
For reference, I had a chimney stack removed as part of my loft conversion (it was in front of the new window and was defunct) and I think it added about £400 to the bill, but obviously we already had the scaffold up, which is a large part of the expense.
I'd get a couple of other quotes, perhaps asking about the two options of removing all of it vs putting in an RSJ to support it.
Ultimately, yep it's going to cost a bit of money unless you just leave it. You could always put it off a couple of years if you have any other work planned and roll it all together?

Thank you all, that's very helpful.

Firstly i cannot remove chimney stack because its shared with a neighbour so i am after supporting it. What i am not clear is thar builder quotes 3k each chimney on the phone. There is a chimney stack on the roof and a chimney on the loft underneath. In this case does it count for supporting one (3k) or two chimneys (6k)?

Secondly, my solicitor has no mention of indemnity so far so its unlikely he would insist in getting one now. Plus, the vendor already approached the council. In any case, the risk of council enforcing the action is really low after 20 years even if the problem is made aware of them.

Thirdly we dont plan to do any future work on loft coz its all converted so any work here is for supporting the chimney and stack only i am afraid.

Lastly my intention is do the remedial work to properly support it and get the building control sign off. The question is how much this whole thing would cost me and whether I can knock this off my purchase price.

The structural engineer refused to give me more cost info and insisted they must pay a visit, the problem is that the visit alone would cost 400-500 quid, i cant pay for this. Plus the vendor has not given the permission nor agreed to pay. This is where we are stuck.

Its a good property overall so it will be a shame to pull out because of the chimney issue.

Any advice on cost estimate or how to make progress from here is highly appreciated.

We had gallows brackets installed (big steel brackets) for our chimney breast at £1.5k. Add in structural engineer and building control and it should be around £1,000 for the professional services and £1,500/chimney.

Unless he’s actually talking about putting an I-beam in all the way for chimney support. Then I’ve no experience but if it will be cheaper ask him why not use gallows brackets?

Thanks @Hiddenmnetter, if i only re-support (not remove) the chimney, do i need a party wall agreement mine is sharing the wall with the neighbour? If so, it looks like another big cost to be added. People say that can cost another 1.5k, is it that expensive? Thanks.

A party wall agreement is free unless your neighbour refuses to agree to the party wall works (it is in your neighbours interest to agree these works). If your neighbour refuses to agree the works, then you need a party wall surveyor to force their hand. That can cost up to £1,500.

The party wall act is designed to allow people to do works. Your neighbour would be foolish to decline you permission to put gallows brackets up because if the party wall comes down it will signficantly affect him! As you are attempting to rectify this in the fully proper way (planning and an engineer etc) there’s no sensible reason to decline it. If an engineer tells you gallows brackets will do the trick then just get on with a builder and do it. It takes less than 1 day. By the time your neighbour goes to the bother of getting an injunction the works will be finished. After which it will be up to the neighbour to prove that your works ought to not have gone ahead. Which is unlikely as they were necessary to support the chimney.

Thank you @hiddenmnetter, thats helpful. I just dont want to be sued and also keen to have good relationship as i will be living there for.many years, so i will provision the surveyor cost and hope for the best.

community.screwfix.com/threads/worried-about-gallows-brackets-under-chimney-stack.176828/page-2

Screwfix is a good place to ask about this stuff. I thought gallows brackets couldn't be used any more but seems not.

£500 just for a structural engineer's visit?! I need to up my fees....

Gallows brackets are not a recommended method of support so I wouldn't assume that you could do it.

I'm not quite sure what you mean about two chimneys. Is it one chimney going through the loft and up past the roof? You would support the chimney at the lowest level that it extends to, it wouldn't need supporting at each individual level.

The structural engineer will design the support, if they specify gallows brackets then the building control would accept it.
Personally I'd get the report done and specifically to look for signs of damage or instability, if not then leave it, if so ask the vendor to pay at least half.
Ideal would be take the stack down. Ours was shared and we discussed with the neighbours we might be doing work and the only thing they wanted to know is if we would take the top off the stack and fill the hole when we replaced the roof. The neighbours at your may want shot of the chimney too

I work in BC and we don't accept gallows brackets - especially in Victorian houses.

I wouldn't worry too much. Building Control won't take action. I'd accept an indemnity.

Thank you all. The building control was approached thus making indemnity insurance redundant. Also, even they know, i doubt they will enforce 19 years later.

I wont know what the neighbour wants until after completion, so i have to assume that supporting is the most likely option.

I assume steel beams are more expensive than RSJs?

Anyway i will propose to have the structursl engineer come check. If vendor doesnt like it, i will show her the worst case scenario.

Its a good property and it will be a shame to pull out because of this. Fingers crossed!

An RSJ (rolled steel joist) is an old style steel beam. People just call all beams an RSJ even though that's not technically what you use now.

All, today the vendor came back saying that the chimney breast was part of the loft conversation done in 1999. There was a completion certificate provided. However, I don't understand how the removal of the chimney breast downstairs would be a part of the loft conversion to begin with (in fact the chimney on the loft room is intact). Also the completion certificate states the loft conversion but has no mention of the chimney removal downstairs whatsoever therefore I don't feel it is conclusive that the chimney work had been signed off. I wonder why the vendor didn't just ask the council to retrieve the archived document behind the building control completion certificate in 1999. Should this document record what items had been inspected and signed off by the council? i.e. if it shows the chimney breast removal is checked, then that would be conclusive in my opinion. Does such a document exist at all? If not, is there any other way to substantiate vendor's claim that the building control sign off for the loft conversion also incorporates the chimney breast removals downstairs? Thank you in advance.