So I have managed to get settled in this week. The weekend was spend bringing the workshop over (but more on that later) and the last car loads of clothes and food have been bought across from the farm cottage I have been renting so it was time to start getting the trades out to evaluate my project request against the indicative budget.
With the house having a number of open fireplaces and decommissioned gas fires, I am currently relying on the combi boiler and radiators to heat the house. Apart from the big hallway which is a large space where the heat disappears up the staircase, most of the house heats well although the lounge could do with a bit of a boost. I did have a problem with the timer running at 1/3 speed so every hour only rotated the timer 20 mins (which explains why the heating was not coming on as per how I had set it) but a local company sorted this out for me straight away (many thanks to D.E.W Plumbing and Heating in Blaenau Ffestiniog for sorting this the same day).
So back to the main topic of this post. The fire places. As usual my plan is to get 2 or 3 quotations for all the work and where possible give local trades the opportunity so a quick search found one company locally who were able to come out and give me a view.
My plan was:
- Lounge – Add a log burner either in the existing fireplace or remove the fire place and create a new hearth further up with an external flue
- Dining Room – Recommission the existing chimney and fireplace to have an open fire
- Back bedroom (linked to dinning room chimney stack) – has a lovely open grate that I would love to recommission as an open fire in my bedroom
- Front bedroom (linked to the lounge chimney stack) – has a lovely open grate that I would like to know if I could recommission as an open fire in the guest room
The initial feedback was that people are now “discouraged” from recommissioning open fires due to fact that they only operate at between 10 and 20% heating efficiency and I was advised that for the two bedrooms probably the best solution for now was just to give them a good clean and make a feature of them. I could always put a small wood burner in the back bedroom as a heat generating feature if I really wanted to.
The lounge was straight forward, the current chimney stack was viable but needed a liner specific for a wood burner as the current one was for a gas installation and the indicative pricing put me just in budget for have the liner fitted, the fireplace and hearth removed and a new one constructed then a nice word burner selected.
So onto the thrust of this article which was the dining room. Initially I was disappointed as I really had my heart set on an occasional open fire but the good news was that the chimney stack once again was viable for a liner. But on inspection a ridge was noticed in the wall at a height of about 6 foot. This was about 9 inches deep and ran 2/3 of the width of the chimney breast. Also going into an adjacent cupboard was a set of water pipes.
The suspicions now are that this fireplace has been significantly closed up and when we open it up we have the potential of finding an original welsh slate lintel and possible the original range (if it was not removed).
This is either going to be an exciting find or a huge disappointment but at the end of the day all I wanted was a small open fire and as I know the flue is viable I can replace that with a nice woodburner and if we find something even more original when we open it up then that really will be a lovely find.
Will keep you all updated as this progresses.