Chimney Sweeping
Chimney sweeping is a very old tradition so it’s quite possible you’ve been wondering what this process looks like. Essentially, chimney cleaning involves using various chimney cleaning tools. This includes chimney sweeping brushes, rods, and vacuums to manually clean the chimney from top to bottom. Even though the process is completely manual, you needn’t worry about us taking up much time. We run a highly professional crew. We’re usually through with sweeping and cleaning your chimney and fireplace top to bottom in no more than 2 hours.
Here, you’ll get a brief summary of what the process entails. You’ll have a general idea of what we do, and what you’ll be paying us for exactly.
Chimney Sweeping Preparation
Making sure a chimney is clean and in perfect working condition can be a very dirty process for your home. This is why one of the first things we do when we enter your home is clear around the fireplace. This includes all the furniture surrounding the hearth and vents.
The next thing we do is to put drop cloths on the opening of the fireplace. We also do this for all the furniture in the surrounding area. We then set up our state-of-the-art industrial vacuum. The vacuum cleaner doesn’t clean the chimney. There isn’t any machine that can do that. What it does, however, is make sure that no dust particles stain your home. It also picks up any loose material that might fall during the course of your fireplace sweep. It is important for us that we service your home and leave it as neat as when we arrived.
Chimney Inspection
What we do next is to make an opening in the chimney breast if needed. This will allow us to reach in and remove the flue. After this, proper inspection begins. Again, there is no machine or tool for this and it must be done manually. An inspection is how you find out the extent to which the chimney is dirty or damaged.
Our chimney sweeper goes in and does an examination of your chimney and flue with a flashlight. What tools and methods we use to clean your chimney will be determined with this inspection. Also, the inspection process lets us know if you have animals like birds or squirrels living in your chimney.
Chimney sweeping Process
Chimney sweeping can be worked on completely now that its condition has been determined. Our sweeps make their way to the top of the roof and begin the cleaning process. They run special brushes up and down the entire length of the chimney and the flue. The aim of this is to dislodge all the various unwanted particles attached to the insides of the flue. This includes soot, ash debris, dust particles, and most importantly, the creosote buildup that has accumulated all around the chimney.
Deposits of the cleaning process fall into the fireplace but do not escape into the house. During this process, we have sealed a HEPA soot vacuum to the mouth of the fireplace. Rather, the vacuum collects the dirt, making sure that your home stays very clean.
Second Chimney Inspection
The insides of the chimney go through a second more thorough inspection after the initial scrubbing. This allows us to gauge how well the cleaning process worked. Usually, one round of this is enough. However, we may have to repeat the cleaning process if the chimney hasn’t been cleaned before or very recently. We can begin the process of checking the structural soundness of the chimney once it has been certified clean.
Usually, this inspection isn’t conducted initially. Soot and debris covering the insides of the chimney prevents you from seeing any cracks or holes in the flue liner, masonry, or chimney brick. If the structure of the chimney is sound, we move on to cleaning the fireplace.
Cleaning a chimney properly involves cleaning where the smoke and flames pass out but also where they are created. Only when the chimney and hearth are spotless is a chimney cleaning process is considered complete.
fireplace cleaning
For fireplace cleaning, we employ custom brushes to brush out the soot and ashes located in the smoke chamber. From the smoke chamber, the brushes are run all the way to the damper through the throat of the fireplace. We repeat this process twice for good measure. After we have made certain the hearth is spotless, we clean the smoke shelf by removing every bit of dirt. We then move on to clear out the fireplace.
Fireplace Inspection
As we did with the chimney, we begin a second inspection of the structural integrity of the fireplace only after it has been cleaned out. This is so that we do not miss any signs of damage or wear to the firebox. The method of approach for inspecting fireplaces for structural sounds differs, depending on what type of fireplace we’re dealing with.
Complete fireplace cleaning
We would remove the baffles of the wood-burning stove to properly assess the functioning condition of all its body parts. Another reason for removing the baffles is to clean the dirt that entered the stove during the earlier cleaning operation. For some other types of installations, they would have to be dismantled completely before they can be properly inspected and cleaned.
Final Chimney report and Cleanup
The final phase is to have the power turned off on the soot vacuum and move it out of your house. We lift and carry away the drop cloths. We then provide a summary report of our evaluation of the state of your chimney. And a detailed analysis of all the processes we carried out for cleaning and maintaining the chimney.
