emerychen•17d agoTop Commenter

Just noticed a problem with old clay flue liners at a job in Richmond

I was doing a routine cleaning last Tuesday on a house built in 1952 and saw the clay liner had cracks running all the way down one side. The homeowner said they never had it inspected because it looked fine from the bottom. Has anyone else run into hidden damage like this behind older liners?

3 comments

3 Comments

the_joel16d ago

and it's not just chimneys either, man. i've seen this same thing with old plumbing vent stacks and even the drain lines under houses from that era. people just look at the visible part and assume everything's fine, but those clay pipes and liners are brittle and they crack from the top down because that's where the heat and moisture hit first. my uncle had a 50s house with a clay sewer line that looked fine from the cleanout, but a camera showed it was basically caved in halfway to the street. it's like the whole "check the engine oil" thing - just because the dipstick shows nothing weird doesn't mean gaskets aren't leaking or the timing chain isn't stretched.

ryang6516d ago

looked fine from the bottom" is exactly what my buddy Mike thought. He was cleaning a chimney in an old house near Short Pump, liner looked perfect from the fireplace. Then he ran his camera up and saw the whole thing was split like a zipper from the top down. Nobody had looked at it in 20 years.

xenarobinson16d ago

Yeah I read a forum post where a guy said those old liners basically turn into eggshells after a few decades.