Up to what temperature will a concrete wall withstand?

Question

I am installing a wood stove in my house with concrete block walls. I am installing the stove pipe out the wall and am I am curious as to what type of temperature the blocks will hold up to?

Answer 1

my grandpa is in the process of building a house with concrete walls. he had his torch and asked me if i wanted to see what concrete does when it is heated to much. so he took his torch and adjusted the flame and showed the stream of the blue flame. "watch this," he said. he put the flame up to the concrete. a few minutes passed and the concrete started popping. he removed the flame and there was no diffrence in the concrete except for that it was black. but this was a blue flame and it was only small pops. he had left it on the concrete for minutes. blue flames are very hot. it would depend on what the concrete is made up of. he asked me, want to know the point of doing this is. its to show you that no amount of heat can burn this house down. at least not any heat that would occur naturally through fires....so this house i am building is fire proof. i was very young at the time (6-7)and he was always explaining things to me.

so if you think that the blocks will not be able to stand up to the tempature of the heat created by the wood burning stove there is nothing to worry about. if you would like to be on the safe side you can get specially engineered fire brick that is made especially for fireplaces and is made to withstand intense heat. but i think the concrete blocks should withstand the heat of the wood burning stove because wood does not generate near the amount of heat a torch can. but there is no doubt that that bricks will withstand the heat. it is perfectly safe.

A. Concrete is a composite material that consists of a binding medium (Section 4.1) embedded with fine aggregate (typically sand) and coarse aggregate (typically gravel) (Section 4.3). Essential concrete ingredients are shown in Fig. 1. In hydraulic cement concrete, the binder is cement paste, a mixture of hydraulic cement and water (Section 4.2),and possibly one or more admixtures (Section 4.4).


so it is made with typically sand and gravel. to learn the tempature these things can withstand you would have to refer to the rock cycle. some websites that explain how these things are made and destroyed will tell how they are created and tell the melting points of them.......or the tempatures they can withstand.

but as i said before there is no doubt the concrete will withstand the heat.

Answer 2

different types of concrete have different heat tolerances. First you should make certain that the pipe you are using to make the penetration is a double walled pipe designed specifically for that purpose. The exterior wall of this pipe should be made of either stainless steel , or some other rust-resistant material. You may want to consider building the wall with its own sleeve that will accept the proper size pipe so that if future plans change you only have to remove the pipe and not compromise the stability of the wall by having to remove part of it. The gap between your sleeve in the wall and the actual exhaust pipe could then be filled with almost any type of heat resistant insulation and then covered with a flashing ring. Providing a layer or two protection between the most extreme heat in your pipes and the concrete blocks should prevent any compromise of the adhesion required for concrete blocks to remain stable over long periods of time. If you think that these blocks could suffer damage you could always mortar in a sleeve made out of fireplace bricks, which are fired at a higher temperature to ensure their resistance to heat.

Answer 3

I'm not a home-improvement whiz, but I'm pretty sure you won't have a problem. The stove pipe is the exhaust, not the flame. Flame hot. Exhaust...not hot enough to burn up concrete.

If you put cured concrete in a stove and bake it at a really high temperature (I mean, like hundreds of degrees, maybe thousands), it just dries out and turns back into concrete.

I don't know what cinderblocks are made out of. I don't know that it's concrete. You probably mean cinderblocks, right? Or do you mean blocks of molded concrete?

I don't think it'll be a problem. I mean, touch a stove pipe sometimes--quick like a bunny! It's hot, but it's not going to incinerate cinderblocks or concrete.

Answer 4

Concrete Homes are Fire Resistant!
Of all construction materials, concrete is one of the most resistant to heat and fire. That fire resistance gives houses built with insulating concrete forms (ICFs) certain safety advantages. Experience shows that concrete structures are more likely to remain standing through fire than are structures of other materials. Unlike wood, concrete does not burn. This has been confirmed in fire-wall tests. In these tests ICF walls were subjected to continuous gas flames and temperatures of up to 2000¡F for as long as 4 hours. None of the ICF walls ever failed structurally. All of the ICFs tested were of the "flat" or "uninterrupted grid" type, having no significant breaks in the concrete layer. In contrast, wood frame walls typically collapse in an hour or less.

Answer 5

That I don't know, but they do make bricks and stuff like that especially for fireplaces. So I would go with something like that....it should have some type of fire or heat rating on it. Using regular blocks, I would imagine could fail or crumble from the heat, and in turn cause a fire. To be safe than sorry, talk to some fireplace experts, or some professional masons. Best of luck to you.

Answer 6

im guessing a could couple 1000 degrees, but mabey just in case get a protective covering for the stove pipe, if you do that mabey get some kind of special metal tubing, it may be expensive but protecting the biggest investment of yur life (the house) is much more important

Answer 7

You will not have an issue. The concrete block wall is rated as a firestop.

Answer 8

If you are using Bvent (fancy name for double walled vent pipe) or the black stove pipe (should also be double walled) Then you probably have nothing to worry about. Check code on stove pipe just to be sure.