The main chimney in our house literally exploded last night. It sounded like a cross between an M-80 firecracker and a bolt of lightning. At first I thought it was thunder, but when I heard stuff falling onto the roof I knew it was something else. I went back to sleep but when I came home today I looked up on the roof and saw that a huge hole had been blown out of the side of the chimney and there were bricks and debris all over the roof. I immediately called the landlord and he came to look at it. Last night was a clear night here, no storms, not much wind. I know lightning can come out of a clear blue sky, and that it very well could have been what caused the blast, but the bricks do not appear charred as though lightning hit them. Looking at the damage from a certain angle makes it look as though the explosion came from within the chimney itself and not from outside, as some of the remaining bricks look "blown out".
The fireplaces here are not functional, however the chimney does serve as a vent for the boilers and the hot water heaters. The entire thing is very worrying, obviously. We won't get a better idea of what really happened until someone actually goes up on the roof and looks closely. Could the exhaust from the boilers have gotten trapped somehow and all the energy released at once? I am totally amazed that nothing caught on fire, or more precisely that something other than a source of fire could have caused such a thing to happen. Any clues???
The fireplaces here are not functional, however the chimney does serve as a vent for the boilers and the hot water heaters. The entire thing is very worrying, obviously. We won't get a better idea of what really happened until someone actually goes up on the roof and looks closely. Could the exhaust from the boilers have gotten trapped somehow and all the energy released at once? I am totally amazed that nothing caught on fire, or more precisely that something other than a source of fire could have caused such a thing to happen. Any clues???
