My chimney (25ft approximately, one story house) was recently inspected and the guy recommended a chimney liner for the furnace due to the grouting having been eaten away. He quoted $2000 for the parts and labor.
It looks like this should be a fairly simple thing to install, not only that but the most expensive and largest diameter kit I could find online was still well under $1000.
Is this a reasonable DIY project?
What sort of surprises should I be aware of? (i.e. needing to expand the hole in the basement)
Best Answer
How high is your chimney?
We're looking at installing a wood burner and had someone round to quote. We discussed the options and they were adamant that they would need scaffolding erecting to reach the top of the chimney. They said that manoeuvring the liner up the outside of the house would be nearly impossible without it.
Now our's is a three storey house so that's a lot of scaffolding and I expect that to be a major part of the cost. So the quote could well include that which you might not have accounted for.
This would make it, for me, something I'd be happy to pay someone to do. We fitted a lightweight pipe in another chimney where we had access to the top from inside the house and that was very easy, but a heavy weight liner for a fire/furnace would be a different matter altogether.
In your case - for a single storey house the cost of scaffolding (if any) will be a lot less.
What you should do is to ask for a quote that's broken down into parts. So you want to know (as a minimum):
Given that the cost of the pipe you found was less than $1,000, $2,000 for the whole job doesn't seem too outrageous when you consider the other factors. As a rule of thumb I look at the cost of the parts and then double it to account for the labour charges.