Is the sooteater the way to go?

they both work, the soot eater is nice if you have bends in the system..... i have used both on a straight shot of 18 ft, they both work.

+1 I use a sooteater set for my stove at home and flat love it (im running pellet into a 6 inch wood chimney so it was 2 sets for me (one for pellet one for wood) )

good solid product I recommend them all the time

I just brushed today from the roof. There was nothing hard about it. With the sooteater i would always wonder if the job was done well.

All Ive ever used is the sooteater.... the older one with the flexible white rods. If you want to be able to brush from the bottom and do not have a straight shot to feed 3 foot stiff rod sections in its a great option.

As far as how well it cleans Ive never had a problem. Mine even cleans out the cap well ( I braved the roof once after using it to verify).

I have two full kits to clean my chimney - no issues with it and it cleans well.

Need to replace the trimmer line after three years but the first two years it cleaned my and my neighbors chimneys

I brushed my insert chimney and my stove chimney this week. The sooteater handled both beautifully from the bottom up. That's two
years that I haven't had to climb up on my roof. I can see by looking at the pipe as to the job it's doing. And I know that it's getting every
area because it never gets stuck like the rods/brush used to do. If you've measured the distance from chimney cap to the end of the pipe,
it does a nice job on the chimney cap without any surprises.

Having said that, for really nasty creosote, neither one is going to do the job. Does a great job on the powdery stuff.

Will the sooteater puncture my 6inch ss liner? Im afraid with my setup, i have a off set box, that when i insert the rod i will be pushing on the back part of the ss liner while going up, im afraid while i spin it and the pressure pushing on one side of the liner will act like a weed wacker and rip it, is this possible?

Hasn't been an issue with mine

how fast should i spin it, any recommended rpms?

I use a cordless drill on the low gear full throttle and run it up slowly (30 seconds per rod)

pastera said:

I use a cordless drill on the low gear full throttle and run it up slowly (30 seconds per rod)

Click to expand...

Anyone else? Im getting ready to do my class A as well. First time sooteater user.

My insert has the offset box and a liner. I pull the trigger on my old electric drill and ran it up slowly back and forth several times for each rod and then repeat on the way back down. I didn't do anything special with the speed.

Soot eater uses string trimmer line to brush the surfaces - the material poses no direct danger to a metal flue.

I push mine all the way up into the cap and clean the screen off with it - inspection with binoculars and a 45x spotting scope doesn't show any damage to the screen.

Use reason with the drill speed and you won't damage your chimney or liner - If you spin it up to 2000 rpm with a big 120v drill you'll probably shake the chimney loose just before on of the rods snaps but a couple of hundred RPM from a cordless won't hurt anything

So when that string trimmer line hits the sharp edges of the chimney cap (no screen in my simpson cap) does it cut off the string line? I do a lot of weedwacking and when I near anything sharp, the trimmer line cuts off quickly.

I'm almost ready to throw my brush into the woods if this thing works so well.

I only have a screen on my cap during the off season, so no need to clean it. I put a piece of tape around one of my rods to mark how far I need to go up. When the tape on the last rod is at the lip if the stove, I know the soot eater head is right at the top of the pipe.
I run my cordless drill on low and slowly move up, down, up for each rod section. Takes me about 20 minutes from the time I get the soot eater out of the garage to when I put it away.
I've been very happy with the product. Easy, effective, no getting on the roof.

I just don't "do" roofs anymore...at least not my 7/12 pitch tile roofs...even in the best of weather. Both of my chimneys have screens installed (which have never caused me any sort of problem) I clean both of my flue systems, each of which has back-to-back 45°'s installed, from the bottom up using a soot eater. I use a DeWalt 18v. cordless drill, and I spin it and move it at a leisurely pace. I know when I'm approaching the cap by how many rods I've added on the way up, then I put the drill in reverse and proceed carefully, just so as to preclude any freak possibility of loosening the top section of chimney. I can easily feel the brush bumping against the inside of the cap. Bump it a few times, then start the rig back down. Never had a problem with the screen wanting to trim the trimmer. It requires some extra care and preparation at the bottom end to make sure the mess is contained, but for me with my aversion to going topside, the soot eater's the right tool for the job. Rick

I plan to be far more careful next year. My original kit has the white "apparently solid" rods. The black (hollow) rods on the extension kit have broken on me twice. I think I will use a weak torque setting on the drill next time. I only need extra extension to hit the cap.

It works well as far as cleaning goes but the 3 of the black "hollow" rods have broken on me none while in the chimney thankfully. I did contact the manufacture and they sent me 3 brand new rods no charge with a prepaid box to send back the broken ones to be analyzed.

I use the black ones attached to drill so if they snap retrieval is far easier.

I'm not sold on the black rods but the white ones I am.

Maybe they felt there was some extension limit using the white rods but they seem far more durable

Enzo's Dad said:

I am buying a brush and rods this week to clean my chimney. Is the sooteater a good product? Does it last?

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Enzo,

What is your set-up like ? Do you plan to bottom up clean ?

I have a sooteater and so far so good. I am a bottom up cleaner so my options are limited.
See link to my tips. https://www.hearth.com/talk/threads...n-chimney-first-time-tips.90981/#post-1189802

Hello from Granby CT.

All the Best !

I borrowed a set of Rutland rods and brushes and headed up on my three strory roof w/ a steep pitch and got about half way up and started to slide....enough of that! I ordered a sooteater and never looked back. The person that I borrowed the Rutland rods from is now borrowing my sooteater!