Used those logs every fall for 5 years. Then a certified sweep in Denver showed me the soot buildup still looked like 3 months of neglect inside. Has anyone else found a better preventative product?
Fell for one of those fancy endoscope cameras on Amazon last month. Cost me $200 and the picture quality is so bad I can barely tell soot from brick when I'm inside a flue. The LED lights are so dim they might as well be candles. Has anyone else wasted cash on inspection gear that just collects dust now?
I was on a job last Tuesday in an old house near downtown and the homeowner had tried cleaning his own flue with a wire brush. It gouged the clay liner so bad I could feel the rough spots with my gloved hand. How do you get folks to stop using metal brushes on clay without sounding like a jerk?
I crossed 500 chimney sweeps last Wednesday on a job in old town. Didn't even realize I was close until I counted back through my logbook that night. That number just felt huge for some reason, like damn I've been up on a lot of roofs lol. It made me think about how much I've learned since job number 1 when I showed up with a crappy brush set. Has anyone else kept track of their total jobs and felt surprised when you hit a certain number?
I dropped $120 on a heavy-duty magnetic sweeper from Master Magnet last spring for cleaning up soot nails and debris around job sites (mostly in older brick chimneys around Philly). It picked up maybe half of what it should have, and the rolling mechanism jammed up after just 8 uses. I ended up back using a basic handheld magnet I got for $15 at Harbor Freight - works way better. Has anyone else found a sweeper that actually handles the metal junk we deal with?
I got tired of fighting with my standard brush kit on a tough job in an old house in Portland last month. The creosote buildup was so thick my rods kept snagging and I was up there for 2 hours with barely any progress. I remembered seeing a video where a guy rigged a shop vac hose with a 2 inch PVC reducer to create a tight seal at the bottom. Decided to try it myself and I swear it pulled out chunks of debris I couldn't even reach with the brush. Now I keep a custom PVC adapter in my truck for any chimney that looks really crusty or has tight bends. Has anyone else tried this kind of vacuum trick for heavy buildup instead of relying only on rods?
I used to always go with the thin 316L flex liners on everything. Thought they were easier to install and good enough. But last week I was driving by a house in the Pearl District I worked on about 5 years ago. The owner was out front getting a new liner put in. I stopped and talked to the crew. Turns out the thin liner had developed a couple small pin holes near the top bend. Probably from acidic creosote over time. The new guys were putting in a heavy wall 304 liner instead. I helped them pull the old one out and you could see right where it failed. Now I'm totally rethinking my whole approach. Has anyone else seen thin liners fail after only a few years like that?
Last weekend I drove three hours to see the Chimney Sweep Museum in Little Falls, New York. I figured it would be a quick hour looking at old tools. But I ended up spending two and a half hours because they had an actual 1800s sweep's hut you could walk inside. The docent told me they had over 400 hand brushes from the 1850s. Has anyone else here been to a sweep museum or historical site? I'm wondering if there are more out there worth the drive.
Last month during a job in Pittsburgh, an old timer saw me struggling with a heavy creosote buildup and told me to spray it with a mix of water and vinegar first, and has anyone else tried that because it cut my work time in half?
Was working on a 1920s house in the Irvington neighborhood. Old timer pulls up for the house next door, sees my gear, and starts talking shop. He's been at it since the 70s and told me he never bothered with a HEPA vac. Just uses a stiff bristle brush and a tarp on the floor. Said it's quieter and he gets a better feel for the flue condition by touch. I gotta admit, I was skeptical until I saw him finish a job in half the time I took on mine. Made me wonder if we've all gone overboard with the fancy equipment. Any other old school techniques you guys still swear by?
I was down in Savannah last month checking out some historic homes and noticed this one brick chimney that was leaning pretty bad. Like visibly tilting maybe 3 or 4 degrees off plumb. The homeowner said it's been like that for years and they just sweep it and move on. Has anyone else run into a situation where a chimney is structurally questionable but still in use? I had to tell them it's probably not safe but I'm curious what you all would do if the owner doesn't want to pay for a rebuild.
I was doing a clean on a 1920s house in Baltimore and this guy came out, maybe 80 years old, said he swept chimneys since he was 12. He showed me how to spot a bad flue by the smell of the soot, not by looking. Anyone else pick up a weird trick from a customer or old pro like that?
I cleaned a house in Raleigh last month where the homeowner swore they had it swept annually. Pulled out almost 4 inches of packed dry ash from the bottom 3 feet of the flue - the top half was totally clean. They had a wood stove insert installed 2 years back and never changed their sweeping routine. How do you guys handle customers who think one sweep a year is always enough no matter what they burn?
He swore by wire brushes for 30 years but I heard they can scratch the passivation layer, so I switched to poly brushes last month after a guy in Pittsburgh warned me about it. Anyone here had issues with wire brushes causing corrosion down the road?
I had a job last Tuesday where a homeowner had this old oil furnace liner that collapsed inside the clay tile. I figured I'd run a rotary brush through it and be done by lunch, but I spent four hours just pulling out broken chunks of tile and liner. Has anyone else had a simple job turn into a full day project like that?
Guy with a 1920s house in Providence pointed out I missed a hairline crack where the flue meets the crown. Ever since I started using a fog machine instead of just a flashlight, I catch way more small leaks.
I bought this little inspection camera off Amazon for about 60 bucks, thought it'd save me from climbing up on the roof so much. First time I used it, the picture was all grainy and the light barely showed anything past three feet down the flue. Second time, the cable just snapped inside the chimney on a routine cleaning job. Had to fish it out with a magnet and a wire hanger, wasted a whole afternoon. Anyone else get burned by one of those cheap camera setups?
I had a job last week in an old house near Minneapolis where the flue was packed with so much glaze I couldn't even get my standard wire brush through. Ended up switching to a rotary drill attachment halfway through and it cut the time in half but left more dust everywhere. Anyone else find one method works better for certain types of buildup?
I had this guy named Larry come look at my work after I did a job on Elm Street. He said I was scraping the liner way too hard and actually risking damage. Turns out I was trying to get every last speck of soot off when a light brush is plenty for glass-smooth liners. Has anyone else had to unlearn the 'scrub it clean' mentality?
Was out on a job last week in a house built in the 50s and the homeowner said they had been cleaning their own chimney for years. I took one look at their brush and it was way too small for the 8x12 flue they had. They were just pushing soot around and not actually scrubbing the walls. I had to break it to them that theyve been wasting their effort for like 3 years. How many of you see this on the regular?
I was sweeping a house last Tuesday and this older woman watched me work for like 10 minutes. Then she came over and said I was going at the flue tiles too hard, that I was scraping them instead of brushing. She used to do this job with her dad back in the 70s. She showed me this slow twist motion she always did and said it cut her cleanup time in half. I tried it on the next job and honestly it worked way better. Has anyone else gotten tips from random homeowners that actually stuck?
I've been sweeping for a decade and always bent my rods by hand at the middle. Last month an older guy at a job in Portland showed me to brace them against my thigh and bend from the base. My wrists stopped hurting the next day. Anybody else have a basic move they learned way later than they should have?
I've been sweeping chimneys for about 8 years now and always brushed from the bottom up. Figured you gotta push the soot ahead of you, right? Last month I was working a job over in Oakwood and the homeowner, who used to sweep in the 80s, watched me for a minute. He asked why I was pushing dirt back into the flue instead of pulling it down. Kinda stung because I never really thought about it that way. Now I'm wondering if I've been making extra work for myself all this time. Anyone else have a method they used forever until someone pointed out it was backwards?
I just cleaned out a chimney in a house that had a wood stove going all winter. The buildup was almost 3 inches thick in places. Found a study from the Chimney Safety Institute of America that said 1/8 inch of creosote is enough to start a dangerous fire. How often do you guys actually check yours between cleanings?
I was out at a place near Lancaster County, an old stone farmhouse built in the 1800s, and the homeowner said they hadn't swept the chimney in over a decade. When I got up on the roof I saw the creosote was almost an inch thick in places, and the liner was cracked from a small fire they didn't even notice. Has anyone else run into folks who just don't think about their chimneys until something bad happens?