Tear down a chimney with a rope?

We needed to demolish a chimney.

The cinder block chimney was built in 1950 from low quality materials and was falling apart. Officially condemned. Not usable. Fire hazard. Chunks of it were falling off onto the ground. The chimney had to go.

The cabin with the chimney is located in South Lake Tahoe and was built in 1927. More info on the cabin is here.

I like dangerous instructables that are bigger than me. That's why I posted this one.

So... should we try and yank down the chimney ourselves?

Step 1 Risks of DIY: Don't get crushed!

"Just stand far away, so you don't get crushed!" was not good enough for us. There were other risks besides getting crushed.

We decided on using a cost/benefit analysis.

Potential Costs:
1. Personal harm by crushing (easily contained by standing far away)
2. Damage to car
3. Creating a large, expensive hole in side of cabin
4. Destroying the really cool, historic, river rock fireplace inside the cabin (pictured)

Benefits:
1. Remove useless, ugly, cinder block chimney
2. Save money by doing it ourselves
3. Have fun tearing down a chimney with our car!
4. Install fireproof shingles and save historic cabin from forest fire

The cost/benefit analysis showed equal costs (4) and equal benefits (4). But the forest fire concern was more important than the other points.

We needed to reroof with new fireproof asphalt shingles. The old wood shake shingles were an extreme fire hazard. When there was a forest fire (guaranteed at some future point), the firefighters would flag the cabin as "do not protect" because of the wood shake shingles. It would be a lost cause.

The roofer said if we removed the chimney he would patch the resulting hole at no extra cost. (?!)

Comments

[Kut Korners]

I would like to add that we were listening to CLASSIC ROCK the entire time we did this project. In fact, the same seven classic rock songs all weekend long. And we probably ate some frozen burritos and drank beer. These are important details to include if you want to do this activity.

[maxstevenson]

Led Zep, Stones, Led Zep, Pink Floyd, Led Zep, Yes, Led Zep, repeat!

[harley_rly]

Hellz yeah!

[marinermcv]

 Great, I wish I had pictures when I removed
rotten trees close to a Cabin In Prescott.
 Rope is one of are first tool we used and
still use it today.

 I would stick to the Nylon Yacht braid and avoid polypro line:
                                         
elongation elasticity      Nylon     Polypro

                                              1.0       .80
 The yacht braid elongate's more the the poly pro,
In my Experience with polypro, when it fails it snaps
violently,  When Yacht braid parts it is still dangerous
but it fails and relaxes.

 Great  instructable The bike helmet hard had was great!

[lemonie]

My kind of fun - well done! (Only explosives would have beaten this) L

[maxstevenson]

Thanks for the comment, L! My kind of fun,too.

[Kiteman]

I know you've already done this, but I notice that you have a lot of well-rooted trees around. You could have tied the rope to the chimney and a tree, then winched it down.

[maxstevenson]

We talked about a winch, but we didn't have one. A winch would have have been different, though, giving a steady, incrementally stronger pull with each crank. Different than the bouncing and jerky of my car going back and forth. We didn't consider the "z-rig" described in your second post below, I guess we thought it wouldn't generate enough force?

[Kiteman]

Or even pulled it without a winch.

[Lftndbt]

He was afraid of damaging the cabin by just yanking the chimney off. We were afraid, too.

DECISION:
We decided to just yank the chimney off ourselves, using a rope and my 2001 Honda CRV.

Can I ask, how on earth did you jump from being scared of the contractor "yanking" it off, then deciding to "yank" it off yourselves?

[maxstevenson]

Good question! Five friends own this cabin together, so there was a bit of discussion about this. Farker1 sums it up, though. For a business person (the contractor) to take on the risk it would cost $5,000. For us to take the risk, it would be free, unless something bad happened. Also, the neighbor with the truck and steel cable, his chimney popped off cleanly, and it was similar to ours. Since there was almost no risk of personal physical harm, we couldn't resist. Another factor was the story telling potential. It would have been much much better if we had somehow damaged the cabin. Of course I'm very happy how things turned out. (We really did talk about the benefits of a better story.) In the video, about 3 or 4 seconds before the chimney topples, you can hear one of my friends saying wishfully, "Don't take out the whole cabin!"

[farker1]

I think the jump was the $4800

[nachosyumm]

Nice, that was a fun read! =)