Chimney Stack Removal

[ANM83]

Hi all,

I'm hoping for some guidance. I have a semi detached house in the North West. We are planning on blocking up a side door, doing a kitchen/dining/living room knock through and removing a whole chimney stack (runs through middle of house, no where near neighbors wall) The walls being knocked are 14ft and 13ft, both will need steel supports. I'm confused on how to move forward. We received 2 quotes.1st quote is 6k for all the work, the 2nd quote came in at 2k without steel, with steel he still reckons it will still be less than 3k he explained that he has experience working for a company but recently branched out on his own. Some say the 6k is reasonable and to give the 2k quote a wide berth as it doesn't stack up, others say 6k is too expensive and they think I should go with the cheaper quote. Any suggestions/advice is greatly appreciate

Have you had a structural engineer around to work out loading and therefore size of steel needed. I think you will need building regs sign off too.

The £6k sounds much closer to what I'd expect to pay, if not more. You need a structural engineer's calculations (builder can't really quote without that) and building regs for absolute sure.
Steels have gone way up in price recently.

I’d say the the guy starting up on his own is doing it for a reasonable price to build up some work, most of the job of knocking down chimneys/walls is labour. 3 grand sounds like a decent quote, 6 grand sounds more expensive to me.

The price of rsj’s is cheaper than most people think for domestic loads, your looking at about £36-86 plus vat per meter

Ask for itemised quotes from both to see if there is anything missing from the really cheap one.

Agree with @Andthenanothercupoftea . From my experience of removing stacks and RSJs I’d expect closer to 6 pk than 3 but you need to see material and labour costs and know how loads were calculated - our builder sent a structural engineer to measure and calculate though he’d not be involved with the install.