Chimney & Fireplace

Chimney breast removed, patches appearing when raining, think hydroscopic salts

Anonymous user 23/02/2024 - 3.19 PM

Hello We bought a house a few months ago, the previous owners had already removed the chimney stack and mostly removed upstairs chimney stack (is a small section in one of upstairs rooms left). We had the down stairs chimney breast removed and the wall replastered with plaster board. There was one small darker patch on the plaster which took a few layers of paint to fully cover. The walls were fine until it started raining and now that patch, along with three others, have appeared on the wall. They fade again then get worse in the rain. The builder who removed the chimney breast for us said the bit of remaining chimney in the upstairs room would be fine to stay in and wouldn't be an issue, and there's no sign of a problem with that. The chimney was originally shared with our neighbor (it's a semi detatched house) and his chimney looks in good condition. I don't know the best trade person to properly diagnose it for us. We didn't want to just remove the plaster and add a special coating if it could be a sign of a bigger problem and we want it to be fixed properly. Any advice would be really appreciated, thank you. Helen