Saw a brick chimney in Charleston with zero clearance to the wood siding

I was down in Charleston last month looking at some old houses, and I stopped dead in front of this beautiful historic place. The brick chimney looked great from the street, but when I walked around the side, my heart sank. The back of the chimney was maybe a quarter inch from the wood siding, no gap at all. That's a massive fire hazard just waiting to happen. The heat transfer over years will dry out and char that wood, and with the humidity down there, it's a perfect setup for rot and termites too. I wanted to leave a note for the owner, but you know how that goes. It's a classic case of looks over safety, probably from a renovation decades ago. Has anyone else run into this on old southern homes and found a good way to fix it without tearing the whole wall apart?

3 comments

3 Comments

aaron_ellis424d ago

That kind of thing is everywhere once you start looking for it. People patch over problems to make things look right for now, but the real issue just keeps cooking in the background. It happens with old houses, sure, but also with cars, relationships, you name it. The fix is always harder later, but we keep choosing the easy cover-up.

the_ben23d ago

Oh man, that's a classic find. I see it all the time in Savannah too, these gorgeous old homes with a death trap hidden in plain sight. I helped a friend deal with the exact same thing last year. We ended up hiring a mason to carefully cut back a single course of bricks on the side facing the house, just enough to create a one-inch air gap. It wasn't cheap, but it was way less than rebuilding the whole wall. The heat coming off that thing before we fixed it was scary.

riverwells23d ago

Wait, did you mean cutting back the bricks on the side facing the chimney? Because if the bricks are touching the house framing, that's the real fire risk, not just the heat. Your fix sounds smart for heat, but @the_ben, that air gap might not be enough if the bricks are still in direct contact with any wood. A lot of old homes have the chimney actually tied into the house frame with no clearance at all. That's the scary part you can't always see!