Well, I finally finished my sweeping. As some may recall, I had tried pushing a brush up my chimney and had difficulty at the 30* bend and aborted my attempt a few months ago. Well, I took the advice of many here and ordered a soot eater. (two actually for the extra length of poles). I'm glad I did (both the basic soot eater and the extra poles). All in all it was very easy, worst part was attaching poles while standing on a ladder and trying to keep dust from totally covering myself and my drill. I almost wonder if I should invest in a cheap drill to do this with, but it's too late now I suppose... I don't think I even noticed when I hit the bends, it went right up. I did notice the dust falling - I had taped a bag around the clean-out and even had a plastic pipe (part of my vacuum actually) rigged in there to allow me to pass the poles through so their rotating wouldn't catch the plastic bag as I pushed them through. That seemed to work well as I'm sure the vast majority of the falling debris went into the bag - although some did find its way along the pole and onto the drill and my hands, arms, face, etc (I did have safety goggles on thank goodness).
End result - picture attached of what I collected in the bag. All seemed to be fluffy brown stuff. I had taken some out from my first attempt to clean but not nearly this much (not enough to even measure as I recall). This all came from the top of course.
Now the question - the picture of "in the pipe" is actually my horizontal section. Those with sharp eyes will notice two things (hopefully) - the 'scrapes' on the bottom are from my shop vac hose when I cleaned out the dust that was there, I did not actually run a brush or the soot eater through this section as frankly it was very clean to begin with. The question comes from that white bit on the right there - it appears to be right at the connection to the T (the clean out that is on the outside of the house) and although the picture doesn't really show it well, it looks a lot like fluffy white insulation to me from this side. My question is of course - anyone know what it is? and the follow-up "Should I be concerned and/or do anything about it?" Thanks in advance.
Other pictures - You can see my ladder and the bag tied to the bottom of the clean-out. Fun work site (and I'm sure OSHA wouldn't approve my my 'split' ladder leveling device eh?). Then I stuck on my after-cleaning important work - leaving for ride with kids. The pile of logs in background was a 'gift' from our recent storm courtesy of a local tree service - my first "use my house as a dumping ground" score.
End result - picture attached of what I collected in the bag. All seemed to be fluffy brown stuff. I had taken some out from my first attempt to clean but not nearly this much (not enough to even measure as I recall). This all came from the top of course.
Now the question - the picture of "in the pipe" is actually my horizontal section. Those with sharp eyes will notice two things (hopefully) - the 'scrapes' on the bottom are from my shop vac hose when I cleaned out the dust that was there, I did not actually run a brush or the soot eater through this section as frankly it was very clean to begin with. The question comes from that white bit on the right there - it appears to be right at the connection to the T (the clean out that is on the outside of the house) and although the picture doesn't really show it well, it looks a lot like fluffy white insulation to me from this side. My question is of course - anyone know what it is? and the follow-up "Should I be concerned and/or do anything about it?" Thanks in advance.
Other pictures - You can see my ladder and the bag tied to the bottom of the clean-out. Fun work site (and I'm sure OSHA wouldn't approve my my 'split' ladder leveling device eh?). Then I stuck on my after-cleaning important work - leaving for ride with kids. The pile of logs in background was a 'gift' from our recent storm courtesy of a local tree service - my first "use my house as a dumping ground" score.
