The Cigars go to -
Del and Cantoo The award would have gone to Steve, but we discovered a few little surprises that changed things.
After the chimney cap was removed, we found that the mason had as expected built a chimney within a chimney (actually two chimneys within a chimney - one for the stove and one for the fireplace). He also built it his way - i.e. cemented the flue liner to the chimney (Surprise #1). We also found that the stove chimney is offset so the vertical load of the upper flue tiles is not actually carried through to the flue tiles in the basement level (Surprise #2). Lastly, we found that only the basement level flue tiles were broken (Surprise #3). So all of the broken tiles were removed, a heavy wall SS flex liner was passed through the undamaged flue tile and carried to the foundation and clamped at the top. The liner was insulated from the basement foundation to the first floor foundation with an insulated SS wrap; from the first floor up, the gap between the old clay flue liner and the SS liner was filled with perlite. A tempering fire was built tonight when they finished - what a difference in the draw and stove temperature over the previous uninsulated clay flue liner. Too bad I didn't know the excellent draw of an insulated liner when we built the house; we just went for a flue that would have a good draw which it did until the chimney fire.
Thanks for the replies and helpful advice.
Ron
