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Rant: That clay flue liner in Oak Park that cracked on me

I was doing a routine cleaning on a 1920s house in Oak Park last Tuesday and the clay liner just split right down the middle when I ran the brush through it. Now I'm stuck figuring out how to reline a 40 foot chimney without tearing out the whole wall. Has anyone else dealt with a surprise liner failure mid-job and what did you end up doing?

3 comments

3 Comments

emery19914d agoMost Upvoted

Oh man, that is the absolute worst feeling when the brush hits that split and you just know you're done for the day (or week). I had a similar thing happen not with a liner but with an old chimney pot on a house in Berwyn - I was just doing a basic cap replacement and the whole top three feet crumbled like a stale cookie when I bumped it. Ended up spending two days on scaffolding debating if I should just let the thing collapse and rebuild it, which my wife was thrilled about obviously. The stainless liner route is smart though, I did that on a different house where the clay was so crumbly you could hear it falling apart inside the wall when the wind blew. Makes you wonder how these old systems lasted as long as they did, right?

the_holly15d ago

Oh man, I was totally in the same boat until last year. I used to think clay liners were bulletproof because they've been around forever, but now I get it - that old clay gets brittle and just gives up. I had a 60 foot monster on a Victorian in Evanston do the same thing, and I ended up going with a stainless steel liner kit that was a pain to install but worth it. The trick for me was using a compression fitting at the top to avoid messing with the whole chimney structure.

johnson.faith15d ago

Yeah, that compression fitting trick saved me a ton of headache too, definitely the way to go.