Visited an old Victorian house in Portland and found three flues sharing one clay liner

I was doing a routine sweep on this 1890s place last month in the Pearl District. When I got up on the roof, I saw what looked like one big clay liner but three separate flues feeding into it from the inside. Honestly, I've never seen that before and it made me wonder how common this setup was back then. Has anyone else run into this kind of shared liner situation on older homes?

3 comments

3 Comments

susan8115d ago

Well, I have to say this doesn't sound all that unusual to me for a house that old. A lot of those old Victorians were built cheap and fast, and builders did whatever worked at the time. Three flues sharing one liner might not be up to modern code, but back then it was probably just fine for the small wood stoves they used. I've seen similar setups in other old houses around the Pacific Northwest and they usually worked okay for decades without any real problems. Before getting too worried, I'd check if the chimney has any cracks or if there are signs of smoke coming back into the house. Most likely it's been that way since the 1890s and will be fine for another hundred years unless you're planning to run a giant wood stove through it.

colethomas15d ago

That reminds me of my buddy Mark who bought a 1920s craftsman bungalow out in Portland. He had a similar setup and thought nothing of it for about five years. Then one winter he fired up the fireplace in the living room and smoke started pouring out of a crack in the wall upstairs in the den where he had an old gas stove connected. Turns out that shared liner had finally crumbled inside and the smoke just found a new path of least resistance. Cost him like two grand to get it all relined properly. So yeah, not always a disaster, but worth keeping an eye on if you're using it regularly. You ever have any weird chimney surprises pop up in your place?

jake74715d ago

Read a post the other day saying old chimneys are basically just ticking time bombs.