This is the back of the garage. The garage is decent size, 20′ x 30′ but not big enough for a wood furnace, my plow truck and work shop area. I also wanted a outside southern sun exposed area to sand, cut wood and make dust without messing up the garage. The deck will have a corrugated clear plexiglass roof eventually. This is a beautiful spot to work from with the large maple tree, forest and fern covered leach field not visible where I am standing for the photo. I wanted to try and save the large maple tree so I cantilevered out the deck. The southern exposure will allow me to work on the deck in cold weather.
The back edge of the garage is about 8′ above ground level on the left corner. When I built the foundation for the garage I was concerned about the rock wall shifting because of it’s height- so I added a second tier projecting about 4 feet out from the base for support as shone here. When I needed to add on the deck I just fortified this projection and added the cement piers. In addition I wanted to give the wood furnace room more support so I built up that part of the foundation to garage grade with a rock wall and gravel as shown.
For my other 2 buildings on the property I have cement block chimney’s with clay flue tiles. They are very labor intensive to build and require a good foundation. These stainless steel chimneys have been around for some time. They are relatively light, have a stainless steel inner liner sandwiched with one inch of insulation and a stainless steel outer shell. The stainless steel is to protect the steel from the very corrosive effects of fuel gasses. In fact most chimney’s now day’s are built with this pipe and then a box is built around them to look like a traditional chimney. The metalbestos pipe is not cheap. This package costs around $600 for 12′ including pipe, roof support package, braces and round top.
A couple of things I learned about installing these things. The roof support package is designed to attache to the top of your roof rafters and is adjustable to different pitched roofs. My metal roof was already completed and I just thought I would cut a hole and put this thing through it. There was no way I was going to cut a big hole and attach the brackets to the top of the rafters. I lucked out because of the 2×4″ furring strips I had on top of the rafters for attaching the metal roofing. You can see in the photo what I did. I couldn’t screw the supports brackets in but they weren’t going anywhere because of their location against the furring strips.
The red thing flashing the pipe is called a hot boot and the silver metal strip around the outside is very flexible to allow bending around the roof ribs. It worked like a charm even in cold weather. Not very good looking- I was told that is so the inspector can tell it is a hot boot.
I was surprised how hot the pipe actually gets. When the fire is jumping you can not leave your hand on the pipe. It doesn’t flash burn your hand like a naked black stove pipe but it would in short time. So follow the manufacturers warning and keep everything at least 2 inches away. This whole job took about 4 hours working alone.