Home Improvement Today?

Also the last pic looks real close to back wall id check codes for hardi concrete board behind that. May not be needed but again better safe than sorry

 

Dang that was a pretty nice fireplace. I would’ve kept it and just changed the insert.

 

to each their own for sure.

 

Def old school but the stone was better than most from the era IMO. Maybe because we use different stone types here so just not something that’s seen to often here.

 

Looks better already

 

Put in a woodstove or sealed zero clearance fireplace that only consumes outside air , plus it looks like maybe there has been rainwater or possibly condensation running on the outside of your galvanized flue

 

That stone actually looks cool when painted with Rustoleum flat black high temp bbq paint. It appears similar to dark gray pumice.

edit

Pic of inside of fireplace painted via the above. From midcenturymaurer.com

 

Or just never clean your fireplace and it will look just like that.

 

I watched that episode of dirty jobs, those creosote fires are no joke!

 

Never lived till you've had one...

 

That’s what I wound up doing with my fireplace at the house we just sold. Cleans it up a lot.

 

Well was an exciting two days or so starting last Thursday. Gas Company came out and let us know our month over month gas usage was way up so they were checking the meter. Found out we had a gas leak. So gas got shut off (duh? guess some people throw hissy fits over that). Luckily the tech helped us locate the leak.

The union (to the left) was at ground level with everything to the right of the union being underground. Prior to digging the Gas Tech's meter was reading ~60% gas through the ground. (just an fyi the pipe wasnt as bad as in the photo prior to digging. Couple hits with the shovel and it was flaking off and couple finger pokes collapsed more in)



That being ~3pm Thursday when the tech came out and close to 5pm by the time we found the actual leak and determined we would replace the whole line. Being a bit more rural and small town, businesses still close at 5pm. So Friday morning was a lot of running around. Thankfully the local CAT Rental place (who ive been renting equipment from for building the garage) has a skid steer and trencher attachment and got it delivered within an hour. The gas run is ~110ft and the only gas line in town just happened to be ~130ft so lucked out there. Got the two risers from ACE and then ran into a problem. We had planned to just use the screw together couplers instead of "welding" the pipe since we didnt have that equipment. Problem was there was only 1 coupler in our town and nobody could source another one that wasnt three hours away (for same day or even on Saturday). Thankfully a local plumber my wife knows was willing to meet us at his shop after hours and welded one of the risers to the pipe.

And of course they put the A/C unit directly over the gas line. But wasnt to bad as that was the only hand digging we had to do (minus scooping out loose dirt)


Luckily the skidsteer made pretty quick work of things and we got the trench in and pipe laid (thats the old pipe in this picture). Funny part we went to perform an air test and of course one of the old valves was leaking out of the packing. So another trip to the hardware store lol.



Thankfully after the pressure test the Gas Tech cam out on Saturday and turned the gas on. So we only had no gas for ~36 hours total. Also glad we were in the county and not the city so we didnt have to do city inspections which would have meant waiting till at least tuesday.

 

UPDATE ON THE FIREPLACE:

Cheers for all the input, after tearing down the hearth, I found a capped gas line so things got more interesting now. The gas line is about 4 feet from the wall so I'm thinking there once was an old school fireplace in the center of the room? Either way, the point of this project was to reduce the space of the fireplace not enlarge it. I'm going to have an inspector come out for the gas line and see what our options are with that. Thanks to some CO TW members, I found out wood burning fireplaces have some extra rules so messing with the city/county just doesn't sound like a good time to me.

Thanks for educating me though! Homeownership is gonna be a fucking adventure.

 

If you already have a gas line there, I’d second OZ’s recommendation from above and install a gas fireplace that burns mostly outside air. Thats what we did. I also used the old flue as a chase essentially to route the new intake/exhaust flue. I was able to buy some strapping to attach it to the top and bottom to support it and a telescoping section at the bottom so I could slide the fireplace into position and then connect the flue.

 

Wow. Good work.

I just don't like any kind of underground iron pipe for NG/LP. My place has LP with polymer lines wrapped with a wire for grounding and detection.

 

I'd love to play with your balls...............

OK sorry. That's pretty cool!

 

My fireplace is shaped just like the pic I posted. We have a string of orange (Halloween color) string lights jammed around where flames would be on at timer for evenings. Easy to do but the orange glow is a super cool effect.

 

I've had our local gas company out twice in the past 3 or so years to check a natural gas leak I smelled at the meter. They've replaced parts twice, but I still smell a faint odor once in blue moon if I'm outside standing next to the meter when the tankless water heater kicks on. I've been wondering about the underground pipe, but it's rare when I do smell it.

Yesterday, 11 years ago marks the unfortunate anniversary of the San Bruno, CA natural gas explosion. (9/9/2010)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Bruno_pipeline_explosion

This was local to us and within the past week or so...

https://www.abc15.com/news/local-ne...ry-of-problems-led-to-chandler-leak-explosion
https://www.abc15.com/news/region-n...cuated-to-investigate-an-underground-gas-leak

I guess my point is check your gas meters frequently!