A chimney sweep’s lucky, as lucky can be.

Dammit. Once again, a simple home administration task has turned into a multi-thousand dollar fustercluck.

We had the chimney guys out to clean our chimneys. It was *supposed* to be $79 per flue, for two flues. Instead, I’m left with a bid ($2400, thanks for asking) to:

On the Roof

• Remove the crappy brickwork that the previous owner patched on top of the chimney. These extra bricks actually cause it to pinch in at the top, which radically changes the “draft” behavior of the chimney. I can totally see that this is done wrong, right now.
• Increase the height of the chimney by six tiers of bricks, such that it actually clears the ridge of the house and can get a cross breeze from any direction.
• Install a thing-a-ma-bob to redirect water around the chimney.

In the chimney

• The old flue lining is flaking off in big chunks, revealing blackened bricks. I’m told that this is a fire hazard. They would “tile knock” the remaining flue-bits off the inside of the chimney with some sort of machine.
• Install a new flue liner. Lifetime guarantee and all that good stuff.

In the Basement

• Remove the “black pipe” which currently connects our oil furnace to our chimney. Apparently, this is the sort of pipe that you use for wood smoke, but it’s a bad scene to use it for oil.
• Knock a new opening in the chimney to connect the correct pipe.
• Concrete up the old openings.
• Install an access hatch to clean out the flue from the bottom

That would bring the chimney up to code. Note that this has nothing to do with the fireplace chimney. That one is fine. They said that they would clean that one for free, if they came back to do all this other work. This is about the chimney that carries exhaust from the oil furnace which also provides hot water for the house.

One of the guys said “did you get an inspection? I would punch that inspector in the head, for stuff like this.”

My thought exactly. Next step, second bid / evaluation and a quick call to the lawyer to see if we can speed up the process of squeezing compensation out of the negligent wonks I hired who failed to notice any of this ahead of time.