Euroform were contacted by a house builder who was having difficulty renovating a property located in a quiet sought after area where listed buildings with many period features still existed. This particular builder wanted to turn a broken down cattle shed and cottage into a couple of comfortable cottages meeting all the standards of 2004 but with all the external features of the 16th century, this included period feature chimneys.

Due to the complexity of renovation with period and listed buildings, Euroform had the challenging task of manufacturing 2 Versachimneys using fast-track modern day components to bring back the authentic appearance to suffice planning and to match one of the original chimneys that remained.

The original chimneys where supported on large chimney breasts and were made from corbelled stone with a large stone step feature and where up to 3 metres in height. Just one of these period chimneys would have weighed in the region of about 2 tonnes. The prefabricated Versachimney’s would not have a chimney breast to sit on, as the house builder wanted to maximise the internal floor space, the Versachimney’s could only weigh up to 550 kilos but still needed to have the step detail and be up to 3 metres in height. One of Euroform’s technical department comments, “we had to overcome some major design problems of marrying a fast track, lightweight prefabricated chimney with a 16th century stone chimney, this was one of the most challenging projects Euroform had undertaken but we had confidence that we could design a Versachimney to meet any building requirements”.

Using stainless steel framework and high performance materials such as Versapanel board and Andura spray render, Euroform were able to imitate the original chimneys using the lightweight, prefabricated method. Each Versachimney weighed in at 550 kilos as requested and the 16th century appearance was kept.