Found inside a chimney flue

[Neal Lewis]

Never know what you're going to find. Looks like it was mortared in place for the past 40 years.

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[mgbinspect]

As a mason, I'm trying to imagine how that came to be there. The only scanerio I can conjure up is that it fell in and caught the top edge of a liner. Then got spattered with mortar droppings as the chimney continued up. Is that photo looking up or down the flue"

[Neal Lewis]

Looking down about 8 - 10 feet.

[mgbinspect]

Looking down about 8 - 10 feet.

That's what I thought. It still seems so unlikely, but that brick almost has to have caught an edge, and that gob of mortar left and the mortar on the top of the brick just collected, as the droppings fell down the chimney, as it went up. Funny...

I honestly don't believe that mortar alone could hold a brick in place in a flue like that. The surface of a flue liner is so slick that even if you could get mortar to stick to the surface, it would just take a tap for it to pop right off.