Spent $210 on a rotary chimney brush kit 3 months ago and it already paid for itself on one job
I do mostly single story ranch homes around Dayton so I kept putting off buying a powered rotary setup and kept hand scrubbing like I always did. A customer with a 30 foot flue and serious creosote buildup paid me $450 for the clean, and the rotary kit knocked it out in 40 minutes instead of the 3 hours it would have taken me by hand. Curious what tools you all have bought that ended up being worth every penny right out of the gate?
Grinding through a 30 foot flue with a rotary brush in 40 minutes sounds great until you hit a flue that's glazed and rock hard. Then that same brush just spins on top of the crust and you're back to rods and scrapers anyway, except now you're out $210 plus the time. I've seen guys buy the kit, get one easy job like yours, and then eat it on the next three because the brush can't bite into stage 3 creosote. Hand scrubbing is slow but it works on everything, and you never have to wonder if the tool is the reason the flue is still dirty. Maybe you got lucky with the buildup being the crumbly kind.