No problem here as we don't have a chimbly.
Chimney cleaning Kit.. You must have if you are old than 50...đź‘Ťđź‘Ť
- Thread starter jkim13
- Start date
Help Support Arborist Forum:
I watched the pros clean the chimney at my daughters house during the inspection for insurance purposes. They taped plastic over the opening of the fireplace and ran a shop vac. Used the snap together fiberglass rods that were quite flexible. The head looked like the one in the video. If soot started to get past the plastic the guy with the drill just stopped and waited a bit for the vacuum to catch up. Very fast and clean job. Wish my rods at home were as flexible.
Saw the contents of the shop vac after, very impressed with the overall job.
Saw the contents of the shop vac after, very impressed with the overall job.
MudgeHollowBeaver
ArboristSite Member
I used to have work from the top down with the standard stiff fiberglass rods while clinging to an extension ladder. I finally modified the chimney to add an ash cleanout on the outside wall at the base of the chimney and switched to a SootEater drill type cleaning system. Make sure that you get one with the flexible white nylon rods sections (as opposed to the stiffer type) in order to be able to get around bends in the liner. A cordless drill easily spins the 33 foot long cleaner from the ground and does an excellent job. You can replace the sweep head bristles with heavy weed wacker line when they wear out
woojr
ArboristSite Operative
I've been using what I call a weedwhacker head bottom up clean out system for two seasons for the same reason, can't climb the rooftop situation. My stove is ideally vented through a pipe to a tee with an opening so the stuff drops down into a plastic bag. Here's the only draw back, the cap has a screen that is about 24 feet up and is cold up there where creosote condenses and is a challenge to clean from below. I trimmed and adjusted the nylon cords so they just fit inside the pipe. They can get past the screws and I can see the orange cords in the top from the ground, knowing I am all the way up to the top. It's not easy working the rods up to the top. It's also a bit dirty when fine black dust floats about while moving them up and down. All in all, I only needed to clean it once this season. Probably because I had really dry oaks this season.
since going to the tipple wall insulated chimney a few years ago, chimney cleaning/ build up has been nearly non existent vs the old masonry chimney. Never got a lot out of that either, usually around half a 5 gallon bucket. The stainless chimney hardly get 2 or 3 inches in the bottom of the same bucket.
This closely matches my experience. Stainless liner in a brick chimney with perlite or vermiculite insulation filling the gap. The insulated stainless barely collects a soot dusting, but the inch of liner that projects above the insulation collects an inch of creosote over the course of a season.
Nice thing about bio mass stoves is all they produce is a little bit of dry fly ash and no creosote so cleaning the venting is easy and quick. I pull the cleanout cover on the bottom and it all falls out. Easy-peasy and I don't wind up looking like Aunt Jemima either...lol Never had any desire to burn wood except in the burn pile.
JR Hill
ArboristSite Lurker
DW won't let me get on the steel roof anymore. Especially when it involves half of an extension ladder strapped to the chimney. 25' total. So I called a place that specializes in duct cleaning that also does chimneys. He shows up and looks at the chimney and says "I'm not getting up there" (he was over 50, wink). So he gets a HEPA shop vac out of the truck, a 4' long bag of stuff and a battery drill. Same weed eater head as in the OP with 4' sections. He was done in 20 minutes and that included him inspecting the wood burner, vacuuming all the ash and dust from the inside of the burner. $165 including trip time.
A biggie for this to work is you have to have a straight chimney or in our case we have an 18" offset with 2 45d elbows. The weed eater poles handled that easily. The rig cleaned the cap too and he knew not to pump it hard.
I'll not be cleaning the chimney ever again.
A biggie for this to work is you have to have a straight chimney or in our case we have an 18" offset with 2 45d elbows. The weed eater poles handled that easily. The rig cleaned the cap too and he knew not to pump it hard.
I'll not be cleaning the chimney ever again.
Don't know if anyone already mentioned this, but here's a trick I saw on YT for how to see up inside the chimney - point your camera straight up and take a pic using the flash.
Worked like a charm for me in my old brick chimney, shows everything inside.
Worked like a charm for me in my old brick chimney, shows everything inside.
Not a bad price at all. I haven't had a sweep company out in years wonder what one would charge.
I still have to go on the roof for the rain caps.. The run out from the stove, and the stand pipe outside are cleaned with my feet on the ground accessing from clean-out caps in tees. Haven't figured out how to clean the rain caps from the ground.. Any good ideas ? Or even not so good ?
