Hi Dan,
Hopefully this isn't too late for your planning.
Now I don't remember how he did it, I was just about five years old at the time
maybe 6 when my father raised our little house in Kirkland Lake and excavated
and poured a basement under it before setting it back down onto the new
basement. His method of basement construction was a little unusual compared
with how the contractors were doing it at the time but he also did it mostly
alone with help from my mother and a good friend of his and a small cement
mixer. Actually they removed the clay from under the house with a team of
horses and a scraper which meant he didn't have to raise the house nearly as
much as those using tractors.
This house had a brick chimney original from a point about 6 feet from the
floor and on up through the attic space to the outside. I don't know what used
it originally but in my memory there was an oil space heater in the living room
which provided heat to the entire house. The chimney sloped out of a partition
wall poking into the upper corner of the kitchen then on up through the ceiling.
Once the house had been lowered onto the basement Dad cut a hole through the
kitchen floor, poured a pair of cement pillars then laid a brick chimney from a
couple of feet below the kitchen floor to service a gravity feed furnace in the
basement up to meet the bit of chimney sticking down from the kitchen ceiling.
He first had to disassemble the sloping portion and the face through the
partition wall. I remember some scaffolding he had built to hold the upper
chimney from the kitchen floor while he raised the brickwork to meet the upper
portion. I don't remember how he inserted the top row of bricks.
I do remember that he got used bricks from somewhere which we soaked in a wash
tub before chipping away the old mortar, I remember cleaning off some of those
bricks myself. Actually he also built the first furnace from brick and fire
brick in the basement, we heated with wood and coal in those days.
My father was a hard rock gold miner and not a carpenter or mason. If your
contractor said he can do it I am confident that he can. I expect he will
remove a few bricks from one side of the chimney and then insert a partial
joist which he will shim as necessary and either scab it to the adjacent joist
structure or suspend it from joist hangers, then the other side then remove
bricks and join his joists with transverse structures. Having done that he will
remove the rest of the bricks down to the kitchen floor and if you like all the
way to the basement floor thus reclaiming some room in your basement. Of course
that work you can do for yourself to save a little money.
Actually I would rather enjoy the challenge of doing that myself, particularly
in someone else's home.
Dale Leavens.
----- Original Message -----
From: Dan Rossi
To: Blind Handyman List
Sent: Monday, August 02, 2010 10:13 PM
Subject: [BlindHandyMan] Supporting a chimney
We have begun interviewing contractors to remodel our kitchen. One issue
we have been working around is that there is a chimney running from the
basement, up through the kitchen, and on up through the second floor and
roof, obviously. The hot water tank that had been venting through that
chimney has been moved, so nothing is actually using the chimney any more.
Our plan is to expose the brick of the chimney, it has been plastered over
possibly since it was built, 80 years ago. However, the first contractor
we spoke to asked if we had considered removing that part of the chimney
to just get it out of the way. I told him that I had thought of it, but
didn't think it would be possible to remove the middle of a chimney. I
mean, I assume those things are a tad bit heavy. This contractor implied
that he could remove the middle of the chimney and still support the upper
part from the ceiling joists.
Does this sound realistic?
--
Blue skies.
Dan Rossi
Carnegie Mellon University.
E-Mail: d...@andrew.cmu.edu
Tel: (412) 268-9081
[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
