Why Is Chimney Slanted In Attic In An Old House

What follows are a number of important factors that must be considered before beginning to tear down your old chimney.

Why is chimney slanted in attic in an old house.

I have this old house built in the early 1900s. There are several reasons why a house could have a chimney without having a fireplace. It was straight from the basement up to the attic and then slanted from there. Colonial masons often brought a more central chimney straight up into the attic floor then built the chimney on an angle specifically to cause it to exit the roof at the roof s highest point the ridge.

In the event you wish to remove the chimney for purely aesthetic reasons the effort involved may prove more than it s worth. So if you have an old house you probably have pretty good bricks. That s why you see some houses from the 1800s or even 1700s where the bricks are still in great condition. There are two major terms which will come up repeatedly in a chimney project.

It has a brick chimney that has been cut off below the basement floor joists. The ground is always moving a little bit. One problem with the house is a chimney that was built towards the back of the house but then was built slanted in the attic so it would appear centered on the roofline. On the exposed slanting part in the attic there is black stuff on the outside of the chimney and a whitish powdery film.

It has been abandoned and the bottom part covered over in the walls of the home. This was a house that was moved from its original site to a new site and it was put on a poured concrete foundation. Chimneys like this are all missing flue tiles and generally need some form of repair. Now this chimney does not look in good shape to me.

Here s an example of one below. Here s a few that we have encountered. The reasons for that decision were both cosmetic or aesthetic and possibly for improved fire safety and in some conditions improved draft too. Early furnaces had a small brick utility chimney often square.

The brick chimney terminates in the attic and it has had a chimney liner put in sometime in the past.