"We're using a lot of the stuff..." - mini-drama today at the offices of TOLLROADSnews

We've had Jerry a chimney specialist here today at our building, installing a stainless steel flue for a new gas boiler in the basement. The old oil boiler has been broken up and taken to Reliable Junk, the scrap metal people down the street. Heating oil was going to cost us $6k this winter vs $2.5k gas. So we're switching.

Working from the roof up three stories with a helper, Jerry had to thread a 5 inch (125mm) diameter corrugated bendy steel pipe down through a mix of old 7 inch (175mm) square terra cotta 'tile' and several bends where the terra cotta apparently gives way to bare stone and brick work. It is more a chimney network than just a chimney because it originally had one or two fireplaces on each floor, perhaps five or six fireplaces.

In 1870 when the house was constructed they needed lots of fireplaces. And they weren't too particular about getting the chimney straight or regular in section. It wanders all over the shop and necks down here and there.

The old chimney doesn't provide the draw needed for a gas boiler, and it is probably leaky.

Jerry had been worried about whether he'd get the 5 inch (125mm) flue liber down. There are many twists and turns, and odd protuberances for the liner to get hung up on, he'd remarked using mirrors and lights to see what he had to contend with. He brought a 4 inch (100mm) liner just in case the 5 inch didn't go down. More flexible.

But getting the 5 inch (125mm) steel flue pipe down from the roof to the basement - some 40 feet (12m) went remarkably smoothly.

They mortared in the 'Tee' at the bottom in the basement with bricks, and secured the top of the flue to the top of the chimney with stainless clamps.

The two of them had a break to let the mortar at the bottom set up a bit.

Now they said they just had dumb laboring work to finish the job. With the liner successfully threaed and held in place, the tricky part was done.

A good chimney liner needs to be secured laterally by a vermiculite mix - lightweight grey artificial rock pellets, not unlike dog chow in appearance, the dog food pellets. The vermiculite serves to insulate the liner and to hold it horizontally.

They have many bags of the of the stuff they bring to the job in a trailer and have a mixing machine powered by a 2-stroke gasoline engine to mix the vermiculite with a little cement and water. They mix it out in the street in the trailer, then use 5 gallon plastic buckets to walk it up the back stairs, onto ladders onto the roof. Then they pour it down the chimney to the sides of the flue liner.

After about an hour of the mixing, the hauling and the pouring of the vermiculite mix I went out and up to the roof to see how they were doing.

Jerry said: "It's going down alright, but we're using a lot of the stuff. Are you sure all the old fireplaces are closed off? Yours OK, but what about the other units?"

I assured him they had all been closed off long ago in all three units in the building, mine and the two others.

"This building has no working fireplaces," I told him confidently.

Jerry said: "We may have to go and get some more vermiculite. We're running out."

He said something about it being difficult to estimate how much you need with "these old chimneys."

I didn't think any more about it - their problem, not mine.

I then had a longish work conversation on the telephone with a guy in San Francisco about front end and back end service work on electronic toll systems.

I got up from my desk at the end to stretch my legs and see what the dogs were up to - in addition to Colby the resident office dog I also had a friend's dog Ozzie today while she's working, They'd been scampering around a bit while I was talking.

They always sniff around to see if there's any food loosely secured, then fight over anything they've found.

I buy dog chow in huge bags, enough for a couple of months but much cheaper that way, and keep it in a large metal tub with a loosely fitting lid and a brick on the top. I've often worried the dogs will work out how to get in to the chow tub.

As I moved toward the kitchen area, spreading over the floor was what at first glance was dog chow.

Thinking immediately the dogs had upturned the chow tub while I was on the telephone I loudly abused them for taking advantage of me while I was distracted.

The dogs just looked at me as if to say: "What's this about?"

Then I saw it wasn't the tan color of dog chow but the greyer color of vermiculite. It was the vermiculite mix seeping around the sides of the dog chow tub which gets pushed into an old unused fireplace between the kitchen and the office.

I'd forgotten about that one.

When I moved the dog chow tub a little to see what was happening in the old fireplace the vermiculite mix poured out in an avalanche into the office.

I tried to push the dog chow tub back in to plug the vermiculite flow, but I was too late.

It tumbled and oozed down an old opening and spread like a lava flow, creeping toward my filing cabinets.

I rushed out the back of the building, up the stairs, and climbed up the ladder to the roof telling the guys to "Dammit, stop pouring that stuff, it's running all over my floor."

Jerry said perfectly calmly: "Oh well that explains it. Now we know where it's been going. I'm glad you told us."

(As if I might not have!)

There was some quiet moaning about having to shovel it up off my floor in my office into buckets and having to carry it all up to the roof a second time... after plugging up the old fireplace that I'd forgotten.

I told Jerry and his helper, a quiet younger guy, that at first I'd thought it was dog chow on the floor, not the vermiculite mix, and how I had bawled out the dogs.

On his way out Jerry's helper stopped and patted each dog in turn quietly expressing sympathy to them for having been falsely accused. They deserved compensation, he said, reaching in to the chow tub to give them a handful each.

EDITOR

2008-09-11