Tin Pipe in Fireplace?
A small emergency. I opened up our closed living room fireplace during this year. Inside were bricks cemented together and a rusty tin/ metal pipe on the left side of the fireplace that goes up presumably into the chimney. I am not sure what this pipe does, but I went ahead and assumed it was…
A small emergency. I opened up our closed living room fireplace during this year. Inside were bricks cemented together and a rusty tin/ metal pipe on the left side of the fireplace that goes up presumably into the chimney. I am not sure what this pipe does, but I went ahead and assumed it was the exhaust flue from the heating boiler and water heater that is right below in the basement and decided not to touch it but to just chip the bricks around it so as to have a better view and more space in the fireplace to light candles, etc. The first brick that I removed this am, revealed that the front of the tin pipe was cut away at the bottom and not whole as I had assumed. I am also not sure if the pipe actually connects with the boiler downstairs, since it appears that the boiler flue goes back into the chimney from the basement/ ground floor and that this pipe is in the fireplace which is in front of the chimney in the parlor floor. I also turned on the boiler and lit incense sticks near the flue to see if the incense found its way through the boiler flue into the pipe upstairs (assuming still that they might be connected in some way), but they did not. No fumes, heat or exhaust escaped this (now open/ cut away) pipe, neither did the carbon monoxide detector go off. What is this pipe? Can I safely remove the bricks around it (maybe that could expose more of the cutaway section of this pipe)? Is this some kind of stove pipe/ exhaust? Has anyone had this sort of thing sitting in their fireplace? By the way, the fireplace has a flue at the back that goes into the chimney, so this seems unlikely to be the flue for the fireplace (it is also to one side and runs the full height of the fireplace).
many of these old fireplaces burned coal and may have been pipe vented like a coal stove???
The mystery has been solved! I removed all the bricks yesterday to find that this pipe is the vent for the fireplace. It has a damper in it which still works after all these years and is connected to a knob on the fireplace surround. It has a 8″ or so opening that is a few inches above the fireplace floor. The boiler and water heater from downstairs exhaust through a B-vent which now passes on the right side of the chimney through what appears to be its own flue (the flue is open at the bottom to connect with the fireplace either by design or because some of the brick wall that separated the two flues fell out). The fireplace vent has its own flue on the left as well (tin all the way to the top). The middle of the chimney looks like the inside of a pyramid if you look up into it and seems to have some creosote buildup in it. This part does not open to the top. The old bricks are lovely. The floor of the fireplace has fallen out and some of the bricks can be seen in the part of the chimney below the fireplace. What can I do about this? My ultimate plan is to fit a small gas insert with a coal grate while preserving the old fireplace vent for posterity. Where the floor of the fireplace should be, there are a few rods with hooks at their ends, which form a sort of a grate, but there are no bricks to form the floor of the fireplace below the grate. This fireplace probably also sends heat to the heat register in the bedroom upstairs. Any ideas/ comments? Any chimney/ frieplace contractors that you’ve used and liked?
i’ve had the same experience this weekend, as we’ve opened up our fireplace – the pipe in our fireplace was intended to be the boiler flue, but in fact the pipe was not continuous to the roof, and was blocked halfway up the building – meaning boiler exhaust has been simply traveling up the chimney, likely leaking into our and adjoining properties – we’ve spent the extra money to reline the boiler flue – but this appears to be a very common situation in brownstone brooklyn – poorly lined boiler flues.
josh blackman
brownstone management
718.499.6030