Visited a historic house in Savannah last month and their chimney setup was wild

I was down in Savannah for a job and stopped by the Owens-Thomas House to check out their old chimneys. The whole setup had these narrow flues that were barely 6 inches wide. I talked to one of the guides there and she said the slaves who built the place in the 1800s used local clay to line them. You could see where the mortar had crumbled in spots from age, not from bad work. It got me thinking about how different our standards are now versus back then. We spend so much time worrying about clearances and liners, but those old timers just packed mud around the bricks and called it a day. Has anyone else run into old chimneys that were built with weird local materials?

2 comments

2 Comments

sam_murphy3929d ago

Wait, they used mud clay for chimneys?

felix_lane9929d ago

Considered how those narrow flues probably saved on materials when brick was expensive to fire back then.