Chimney built within house

I need to ask as this house was on the market. If a chimney is built in house, house surrounds it so that the garage is where the base is and then fireplace itself is on the main floor, garage/base is below it and then chimney goes up the roof and goes through attic and sticks out in one upper room, will this heat that room? Id take pictures but they aren’t really going to show the best diagram for this situation but as heat rises...warms the rooms but I’m worried about the brick being really hot in the upper room with an insert.

 

I have a center chimney.. Its concrete block clay flue and brick faced.. It does radiate heat, but brick temps are about a hundred degrees or slightly warm to touch.. There is a lot of mass that radiates heat a long time..

 

Agree with Canadian border VT. Eric VW is just trying to show off his PhD in wood stove Astro macro physics that he got for 6 easy payments of $19.95... The temperature of the chimney will be determined by many factors.. if you’re just running through a clay liner, it’ll be warmer than if you install a stainless liner which will be warmer than if you have an insulated liner. With an interior chimney there’s really no point in insulating any portion of the liner that passes through living spaces... that is unless there are potential draft problems due to a short chimney in which case keeping the flue gasses hot will help the draft. If it was me, with a stainless liner, I would probably insulate any portion that passes through an attic space. I wouldn’t say that you could rely on the chimney to heat the room per se, but the added radiation of the chimney would help even out the temperature between the first and second floors...

 

yes.

if this is exposed brick,
it should radiate some heat into the room

 

Keeps heat for 2 days???! Ok this is just a nice figure to know if I decide to put in an insert because I’m unlikely to change anything else other than have someone install with the liner of course. The chimney is brick and looked good to me in the attic space. The nice thing about this house is I can inspect the chimney nearly all over from the base to the roof and not even leave the house. Now that I reconfirmed that Eric VW has more hot air than a crowd after the local chili bean festival.... we can get to the bottom of this discussion to my reasoning. Most of the houses looked at had chimneys outside the home, others were double chimneys with fireplaces on two different floors.

So if I get a liner, would it be best to just get a steel liner that is not insulated with this chimney? Couple things aside from this: do non-insulated liners last about the same as insulated ones and provided that good care was taken in the liner how long might one last? I also figure from some videos that the liner install is quite quick albiet sealing the chimney top and other possibles like a rain cap.

 

So I have no idea what the life a flue liner should be, but I imagine if you burn without much creosote and you keep the inside of the liner dry, it should last quite a long time.. I’ve considered replacing my rain cap with a chimney cap that covers the whole chimney to allow even less rain in... I think if you were burning wet wood, an insulated liner would last longer than an insulated on for the simple fact that an insulated liner would keep the flue gasses warmer and allow less creosote formation... I’m on year 5 with my smooth wall flex liner and there is zero indication of corrosion or wear... as for the amount of heat radiated from a chimney, it comes down to specific heat and thermal mass... a thick walled chimney will absorb more heat and thus give off that energy far longer.. you can increase the thermal mass with rocks, bricks, concrete or a barrel of water... if you have a lot of thermal mass that has been allowed to cool for a while, it will also take a lot longer to heat it up...

When you get the liner, get a smooth walled one... a little kore expensive. A lot easier to clean...

 

Oh. And another thing.. instead of insulating the liner, you might look into just insulating around your chimney in the attic... and jam a bunch of roxul around the liner at the top before you cap the flue... I forgot to do this... been 5 years since I jammed that 30’ of liner down my chimney and haven’t gotten the motivation to get up there to finish the job. Still works just fine..

 

Ok I’ll look into that. Thanks for the other advice above. I am not assuming anything on the house yet but because these house situations come up, I’m inclined to ask about them because I don’t want to be the guy on the block who has his chimney belching smoke at all except at start up. Respect the neighbors first.

 

I'd think that if an insulated liner is used, then the bricks won't absorb much heat, resulting in not much radiated heat into any rooms.

 

Being in such a mild winter area I’m not competing with much as far as cold weather is concerned. House looks well insulated from what I can tell in the attic, really cool that I can see how different the mortar is put on without wiping it clean for appearances so it looks like thick mayo on a 60 year old sandwich. Honestly I wish I could do this myself but unsure about it for insurance purposes.

 

If you are concerned about code at all, its very very likely that the chimney doesn't not have proper clearance to combustibles, most don't (according to the pros)...and if you can't verify that it does or does not (usually you can't) then insulation on a SS liner is the only way to meet code (and it helps me sleep better at night knowing that if there is a chimney fire, I have a pretty good chance of not having a house fire)

 

As Brenndatomu mentioned code requires an insulatrd liner, if you do not have proper clearances. Which is 2" clearance from the brick chimney to any combustible materials for an internal chimney, 1" if it is an outside brick chimney

 

Makes good sense to me. Even though the brick might only heat a little bit, I had to ask because I didn’t want the brick to be crazy hot nor did I want it super cold either. It’s just my want to turn a fireplace into a safe and efficient heat source. I would take pictures but now I’m getting a little superstitious about it so once I know more, I’ll open up a new thread.