Stainless or aluminum chimney liner

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):

• the cost of materials (not just the pipe)
• the cost of labour
• the cost of scaffolding (if any)
• the cost of removing waste - in the UK this can be significant

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.

Allow for the possibility that you or the next owner might want to use them again, and try closing them off "less destructively" - metal flashing as @bib suggests, or my personal favorite for this job, a glazed ceramic tile mortared onto the top of the flue. Stays put, sheds water, can be knocked free in the future if there's ever a need for it.