Chimney stack is dangerous

[Catherine Taylor]

If your fire doesn’t exit from that chimney then it’s your neighbors but they might not have the money to fix it

[Chloe Harris]

The stack needs to be rebuilt, its soft red sandstone and a lot of the blocks are totally shoot , if they cant afford the work the cheapest way will be to reduce it below the roofline and slate over,,

[Colin Cracknell]

It appears the stack belongs to next door it might butt up to your roof but am guessing it does not intrude into your roof and again if no fireplaces feed into it nor ever have its your neighbours in entirety , it appears a strong wind off collapse and depending on obvious factors it could go into either property , best to sleep downstairs until resolved . The only interest I see you having is any lead work from your roof to the chimney , out of goodwill I might extend any scaffolding to help there costs, but it needs doing with the roof or before

[Daniel King]

Definitely rebuild which is a shared cost and retains architectural integrity of a period building.

[Edward Johnson]

Hi there, it doesn’t look great on the left picture, also the crows will get in.

it looks like the stone is from Penrith, Cumbria?

I’d send a smoke bomb up any open fireplaces to start with

[Jonathan Turner]

Its your neighbours reaponsibility. However your roof will need to be flashed into it so you would need to serve a party wall agreeement on them before any works is done and give them time to respond. As you a firm surface to flash into, and to encourage them to repair their chimney, you could offer to pay for the side that faces your property (but not a quarter because it may need internal feather repairs), so maybe 20% towards it. I would also help by getting a couple of quotes for them to speed it along.

[Neil Andrews]

If it is beyond the boundary – generally taken as the centre of a party wall – and doesn’t serve your property, it is not your chimney or your problem. You may need a survey to confirm its precise position.

If it is an upward extension of the party wall with some of it on your side then maintenance of your side is your responsibility, although that doesn’t sound like the case here.

This is a recent dispute I was involved with, not in this context but the layout is illustrative.

3’s chimney is sole ownership and responsibility of 3, 2’s chimney forms the boundary – centre of PW – so if it were exposed on 3’s side, they would have to maintain that elevation. As it is 3’s newer chimney is built up against 2’s rendering it inaccessible for 3, so all four sides of 3’s are 3’s, all but half a brick on two of three exposed sides of 2’s are 2’s responsibility.

In your scenario here I understand you are in 2’s position, the chimney in question would be as number 3.

[Qamar Hussian]

I have a similar situation just now. I’ve been told it’s cheaper to rebuild the chimney than remove it.

I live in a tenement in Scotland so I think the rules might be different here but it’s on our title deeds that everyone in the building is responsible for the repairs. I don’t know if you have any stipulations on your title deeds as to who is responsible for the roof/chimney stacks ect?

[Simon Fielden]

I am sorry for giving not very helpful advice. My chimney used to look like yours and I just paid for the whole chimney to be repointed and did not not ask anything from my neighbour, who in theory owns half of the chimney. Most of the cost went to scaffolding, while whether the chimney was repointed in half or the whole only made 10% -20% difference in cost. I was really fed up with having dusty crumbly old pointing debris slipping down to my living room during windy days. After it’s been repointed, the bricklayers told me the chimney was not repointed for last 50 years at least, which some of the bricks they could pull out like Jenga. I am glad I have got it sorted.