Chimney Sweeping and Fireplace Cleaning
At Buffalo Chimney Sweep, fireplace cleaning and chimney sweeping are what we do best. Our thorough and detailed cleaning service cleans all the pieces of your fireplace and chimney. Your flue, smoke chamber, smoke shelf, throat, firebox, and chimney cap get our special attention. We clean every crucial piece free from dirt, soot, creosote, and the occasional unwanted intruder. Our service ensures your home and loved ones are safe.
While our Chimney sweeping service cleans the internal pieces of your chimney, we clean the exterior of your chimney equally as well. These more visible parts are equally important at providing a fireplace that pleases while creating a home you’re proud of. There’s something unsightly about soot-covered hearth or a stone or brick face that has lost its new clean look. We can restore your brick or stone fireplace to a like-new appearance. Finally, your fireplace is the center focal point of your room again.
Our expertise is cleaning chimneys in Buffalo, New York. However, if you want to do some basic cleaning of your fireplace here are guidelines.
Tools for Cleaning a Fireplace
Cleaning just your fireplace alone is different from chimney cleaning. It’s significantly safer and doesn’t take as much skill and expertise. Here are a few DIY tips to clean your fireplace, at least until you can call in the big guns.
Moving forward, some basic tools you’ll find helpful for this cleaning exercise is:
- A few drop cloths
- A dust mask to protect your nose from the creosote, ash, and dirt
- A flashlight. So you can see how well your work is going
- Some stiff wire brushes
- Rubber gloves to protect your skin from contact with the corrosive creosote
- Safety goggles to protect your eyes from the creosote, ash, and dirt
- A scraper
- Baking soda
- Some old newspapers
- A dustpan
- A garbage/waste disposal bag
Steps to Clean Your Fireplace
When you have this equipment handy, you can commence the cleaning process. Moving forward, your first and major concern should be for your health and safety. All personal protective equipment should be worn correctly. The next thing to do is to make certain that there isn’t any fire or smoldering going in the fireplace. Ideally, it’s best to carry out this process 24 hours after you last used the fireplace, just to be on the safer side.
After you have done this, make sure you clear a path to the fireplace and cover up everything else, with the canvas drop clothes you got. After this, spread the old newspapers on the floor to cover the mouth of the fireplace. The next thing to do is clear out the fireplace of the ash deposit there. Ash scatters very easily. So, to reduce this, you can pour coffee grounds over the ashes after which you can sweep it into your dustpan.
Next on your list is cleaning out the firebox. For the best result, go in first with your wire brush and brush thoroughly twice. When this is done, you follow up with your scraper and scrub thoroughly to make sure that you catch all the soot deposits in the fireplace. After this, mix the baking soda and some water into a paste and then use this to scrub the insides of the walls one last time.
The only thing left to do is use your flashlight to inspect the firebox to see how well you did. Once there aren’t any visible stains, your work is done. The only thing remaining to do is to clean up. You can start by carefully packing up and putting the newspapers on the floor into the waste bag and clearing up your tools.
While this entire process is relatively easy to carry out, we strongly recommend that you leave this to the professionals. There might be things you’ll encounter that would be best handled by only an expert.
