chimney

[Brimfield]

anybody ever build a masonry cinder block chimney? any ideas or books or web sites?

[mikeyNY]

I have built a few.
Put in a good footing about 4 ft. square below frost line. Start your first block nice and level and go up. You can rig a string line up to the roof line somehow with some firring nailed to the fascia and then just follow that line all the way up. An oldtimer once told a neat trick to lay up all your block in the same day. You can only go so high until the weight of the blocks squeeze out the mortar in the joints below. Buy a bag of marbles. Put one marble on each corner of the blocks and set yor mortar and you can lay up all your block in one day. The mortor will never squeez out and it gives you a nice even joint all day long. I have done it several times it works great. Dont forget to use some sort of ties in the mortor joint to attach to the house so it wont fall over. [img]/forums/images/icons/grin.gif[/img]

[GAFarmer]

All I can tell you is keep the spacing even. My dad and uncle built our fireplace and didn't notice they were putting more mortar in between the bricks on one side then on the other. Now the chimney is a little bit taller on one side then on the other.