Smoke Chamber Parging after large hole filled. Advice?

[DougalMcGuire]

First time poster, long time lurker.

Lot's of great advice on here, wasn't going to post anything at first but I've hit a point where I could use some opinions on the best course of action.

I moved into a new home a few years ago which someone had put in what I think you would call a "slammer" It was a wood burning stove with no liner but it was vented right into the chimney which has a clay flue. This was originally a wood burning fireplace with a "throat" damper. House is from the late 70's.

The bad news is that they cut right through the brick above the fireplace opening and into the smoke chamber at a 90 degree angle and just stopped the pipe in the smoke chamber. I guess the good news is that the smoke shelf and entire damper still works and wasn't cut up.

First thing I did was remove the wood stove completely. I know just burning wood in a masonry fireplace isn't as efficient as an insert or wood stove, but I like it.

Next I had a chimney sweeping company clean it and WETT certify it, on the condition that I fix the hole that was created for the stove about the fireplace opening. They also put a cap with a mesh on top of the chimney top to keep out the rain and animals.

I had a contractor plug up the hole going into the smoke chamber with some matching brick I found in the basement. This isn't firebrick or anything just decorative stone.

Had some custom ceramic glass doors installed with vents you can open and a built in mesh screen. I never burn with the doors open.

Everything works great. Fast forward a few years.

Been reading up about smoke shelves and smoke chambers are not always cleaned by some chimney sweeps, so I end up taking off the damper lid. I ended up cleaning up the lid and assembly real nice and the smoke shelf which had a few chunks of creosote, brick and dead birds I think.

Decided to look up at the flue - looks in great shape but the smoke chamber could use a clean - don't think it's ever been cleaned. Read up on smoke chamber parge and mine looks okay.

And that's when I decided to look at the other side of that hole that was plugged. It's missing a row of bricks and it's not parged, so it's like a little round gap in the smoke chamber and the side of the decorative brick is pretty black and the only thing between the room and the smoke chamber. That brick also gets warm during fires.

See the attached photos.

I'm assuming this isn't really a good thing. Is there any immediate danger or should I get some kind of extra brick put in the back and parged?

Even if I take the damper door off it's kind of hard to access this area from the inside. Even if that brick that was put in was removed I'm not sure this could be fixed from the outside (at least the parging)

I could probably cut out the whole damper with a sawzall or grinder wheel like other have done, so I could stand up in there, then switch the damper over to a newer top mounted one with a chain. Any downsides to doing that?


Any advice would be greatly appreciated, thank you.