Water around fireplace

rayjdav

Building a new timberframe house. Have noticed in the last few days water coming from the chimney (Block built) ponding on the fireplace heart. At first thought it was plasterers throwing away tea out of laziness!! Today there was a minor puddle. Checked the attic (bungalow) and there does not appear to be wet insulation and the felt appears to be well lapped and dry. Cannot gain access to chimney stack in attic because of the way the roof is trussed, "T" shaped extension and access is impossible.
Any suggestions as I MUST have this rectified before I can proceed. Last thing is for it to go away now and return next winter when house all finished.
I must add that the timber frame is extremly damp after the last 4 weeks of cold weather and will have a couple of dehumidifiers in first thing monday morning to start sorting that bit out.
Any help or suggestions welcome before I go all guns blazing to blocklayer/roofer for bad workmanship.
Regards

gillad

A chimney that was constructed badly will show dampness somewhere in the blockwork and if you cant see this anywhere then its just rain,snow or melting ice coming straight down the flue

mossfort

your post dosnt say what stage your at with the roofing.
if the lead flashing isnt yet fitted you will have water coming down around the chimney ,but as you say the attic is insulated i presume your roof is finished.
if a chimney is badly constructed it would not lead to a pool of water on your hearth so it must be a roofing issue.

rayjdav

Mossfort, just to confirm as you stated, the roof is complete and the house is totally sealed, slabbed, skimmed and painted.
The wet/damp? has not shown itself, yet, on any of the ceiling areas but the chimney breast is saturated.
Is there a heat resistant sealant that can be applied to the circumference of the flue, where it exits the stack, just in case this is where the wet is gaining entry?
Regards

rayjdav

Sorry to come back to this but attached is a .pdf of the flue liners as installed over the fireplace.

Notice the 2nd liner is mis-aligned. Would this lead to the problems as noted above in previous post?

I covered the flue with plastic (no fire on!!! ;-)) for the last few days and with the rain yesterday and last night, the floor has not got any worse. I had also redone the pointing around the flue to the chimney pc capping, placing more of an angle to the mortor, in case this was the problem.

Any suggestions welcome as it has become a matter of conern at this stage. As noted, it has not happened before xmas and the chimney as the photo dates was done in September....

Regards

mossfort

its hard to understand how the flue is misalinged when the flue liners are socketed but maybe there are more of them misalinged further up yhe chimney. the only way to tell would be to put some kind of camera up to check .
if there was on dpc fitted below the chimney cap water could be getting through and the top of the cap should be sloping away from the flue.
you can try using a fire resistant sealer around the flue to see if it helps .