Can't do heights; how to clean chimney?

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babzog

Member
Oct 25, 2011
231
Eastern Ontario, Canada
Me and heights do NOT agree - I'm scared like a little schoolgirl if I stand on a chair to change a light bulb so going on the roof is a "never gonna happen" situation for me (it's a very steep pitched roof). How then would I clean the chimney in my Opel 3 ZC fireplace? I'vs never cleaned a chimney myself so am unsure of the process itself. What do I need to do the job? There's about 16' of chimney to the top and then the cap. If I clean bottom up, how do I avoid damaging the cap? Even more important, how do I avoid making a huge mess inside the house?
 
Soot Eater, long flexible rods that look almost like a weed whacker, spins from using a power drill from the bottom up, attach a shop vac inside the clean-out or inside your stove, and comes with plastic to tape over the clean-out to prevent any messes. I'm not a big fan of heights myself and this has worked great for me, as well as for other members here.
 
+1 on the soot eater, that's what I do from the bottom. You know how high your liner is so you can count off the 3 ft sections as you work up. When you get close just go really slow and you will feel some resistance and a tap when the cleaning head hits the underside of the cap. So long as you don't slam it and the cap is screwed in you should not pop it off. Spin it good for a few seconds at the top and in theory it should brush out the cap good.
 
hire it out. real simple
 
Flexible 3' rods that screw into one another with a brush on the end and a shop vac up the chimney.
 
+1 on the soot eater I have seen it in action a couple of times and just ordered it yesterday. They are quite impressive at how well they work and how cheap they are compared to hiring out ( which can be very expensive). The one thing I noticed that made sense to me is they say from the bottom up however it would be cleaner if you went top down in theory. This may be incorrect but the soot and grime will fall down as you use the soot eater so you would be going with the flow if you started on top down.

Good Luck
Pete
 
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