Taking a chimney stack down looks like demolition, and the visible part is. A few courses of stone or brick are lifted off one by one and lowered to the ground. The questions that matter are about what the stack was doing. It may carry its own weight onto a breast in the house below, it may serve a neighbour, and it may be part of a street scene that the council cares about. After the stack is gone, the hole it leaves in the roof has to be closed in a way that keeps water out for years to come. This guide sets out the facts an owner needs before asking for a price: what the stack is attached to, which permissions can apply, how the roof is rebuilt where the stack stood, and what moves the cost. It does not replace the advice of a structural engineer or your building control body where they are needed.
Stack, breast and flue: what you are removing
The first thing to settle is which part is coming out, because the three parts are different jobs.
The stack is the part above the roof: the masonry that rises through the covering, the flaunching and the pots. Taking down the stack alone, to a point below the roof line, leaves the breast in the house untouched, and the breast and its flues are a separate matter. See our chimney repairs service for the wider range of work.
The chimney breast is the part inside the house, the projecting mass of masonry that holds the fireplace and flues and runs up through every storey. Removing a breast is a structural job in its own right, because the masonry above may be resting on it. We cover that side in our guide to chimney breast removal regulations.
The flues are the passages inside the masonry. They run up the stack, and on a shared stack they may serve more than one fireplace, in more than one room, and sometimes in more than one house. A flue still used by a neighbour cannot be closed off by you.
Two further options sit between keeping and removing. The stack can be reduced in height, which is a lighter job and may keep the street appearance. Or it can be rebuilt in the original materials, which is described on our page about a chimney rebuild. When a stack is leaning or decayed beyond repair, owners usually compare removal with rebuilding, and it is worth pricing both before deciding.
Say which of these you mean when you ask for a quote, because a quote for the stack only, for the stack and breast, and for a rebuild are three different jobs.
The structural questions to settle first
A stack is heavy, and the masonry round it is part of the way the house stands. Before anything comes down, someone needs to establish what the stack is holding up and what is holding it up.
Start with the load path. The weight of a stack travels down through the breast to the foundation. Take away the stack alone, and the load on the breast reduces, which is normally safe. Take away the breast and leave the stack above, and you have a mass of masonry hanging in the air, which needs to be supported. This is why removing a breast on the ground floor while keeping the one above needs a calculation, not a guess.
Then look at what the masonry gives to the walls beside it. A chimney is often tied into the party wall or the gable, and the breast may stiffen the wall. On a solid stone wall, a stack that has been leaning or cracking may have taken part of the wall with it. Opening up the area shows what is behind.
Then look at the roof. The rafters and the roof timbers are trimmed round the stack and may be supported by it, and a purlin, the long horizontal beam supporting the rafters mid-slope, can bear on the masonry. Those timbers need new support before the masonry is taken away.
These are matters for a structural engineer and your building control body, who can say what is needed for your own house. We can lay out what we see from the roof and the loft, and photograph it, so that the engineer has the facts.
Consent: listing, conservation areas and building control
Whether you need permission depends on the house, not on the job alone.
On a listed building, taking down a stack changes the character of the building, and it needs consent under the listed building rules from B&NES Council before anything is touched. The conservation officers at B&NES want a conversation before any listed house is altered. Consent for listed work is its own permission, separate from planning permission, and work done without listed building consent is a criminal offence. Around 5,000 of the buildings in Bath are listed. Read the B&NES listed buildings page and speak to the conservation team first.
An unlisted house still raises questions. The World Heritage Site covers all of Bath, and about half the city is conservation area, so a stack on a prominent roofline may interest the council either way. Check with B&NES planning before you commit. Article 4 directions cover a few streets, so ask the council what covers your own address instead of assuming.
Building control is a separate question. Structural alterations can need Building Regulations approval, signed off by the council team or by a registered building control approver. Ask your engineer or building control body whether your job is notifiable.
We explain which permissions apply and look after the building control paperwork when the work is notifiable. For the wider planning picture, including what to ask the council, see our guide to chimney removal planning.
Taking the stack down
The work itself is done from the top, in reverse order of building.
Access goes up first: scaffold round the stack, with a chute or a hoist for the waste. Stone and brick are heavy, and they are not thrown. They are lifted off course by course and lowered in containers. A tall stack on a Bath terrace may be a day's work for the masonry alone, and the access is half the job.
The pots and the flaunching come off first. Then the stack is dismantled down to the level agreed, which may be just below the roof covering, or lower, into the roof space. Where stone is sound and the house carries a listing or a conservation designation, it is worth keeping for reuse. A good stack of Bath stone is a valuable material for repairs elsewhere on the house.
Wildlife law applies too: protected bats and nesting birds may use a neglected stack as a home. Mention any droppings or nests before work begins.
The lead flashings, soakers and back gutter around the stack are removed with the masonry. These parts are described in our guide to flashings and soakers, and taking them out is where the leaks of the future are either prevented or created, because the way the roof is closed up afterwards decides whether it stays dry.
Once the stack is down, the masonry that is not kept is removed from site.
Making the roof good where the stack stood
Once the stack is gone, there is a gap in the roof, and the quality of the closing-up decides whether the roof stays dry. Owners tend to underestimate this stage.
The roof structure is made good first. The rafters that were trimmed round the stack are reinstated. Where the stack stood astride the ridge or a party wall, the framing is completed across the gap, and any timber that has been wet by an old leak is cut out and replaced. A new run of battens is fixed and underlay, the membrane beneath the battens, is laid continuously across the repair.
The covering is next. Slates, stone tiles or clay tiles are laid across the gap in the same pattern as the rest of the roof, using the original materials where they are sound and matched reclaimed material where they are not. Old Bath roofs weather unevenly, and a patch of bright new slate stands out. For that reason we match the existing covering, which is how we approach older roofs.
If part of the stack remains, say a shared one, the lead flashings and back gutter are renewed to suit. If the stack goes entirely, the ridge or the hip beside it is rebuilt and fixed mechanically, since BS 5534 no longer relies on mortar alone for ridge tiles.
Inside the house, the ceiling and the chimney breast need attention where the stack came through. Flues that remain should be dealt with as your building control body advises, and the loft side of the closing-up should be left tidy and checkable.
What moves the cost of removing a stack
Removal is priced on the survey, because a single national figure would hide too much. Its nearest neighbour in the cost guides is the rebuild, which MyBuilder's 2026 chimney repair guide puts at a typical £2,000 to £10,000 or more. Removal with the roof made good is a different job, and our figure is fixed only after a visit to your roof.
These are the things that move the price, in roughly the order they matter.
- Height and size of the stack, which sets the amount of masonry and the time on the scaffold.
- Access, including scaffold, which can be a large share of a small job. A tall terrace with a narrow pavement or a basement area costs more to scaffold than a low detached house.
- The structure: how much temporary support, new timber or engineering the stack needs.
- The covering, because slate, stone tile and clay each close up differently, and matched or reclaimed material costs more than new.
- The paperwork, including drawings for a structural engineer and the lead time for consent.
- Disposal of the masonry, which is heavy and may fill several skips.
Removing a stack does not always cost less than repairing it. If the stack is sound and only needs repointing, the simplest course may be to repair it. The survey shows which option suits the stack, and where repair is enough we price repair.
Photographs from the free survey show you the stack as it stands, and a written ten-year guarantee covers the workmanship.