OK, this is our fourth burning year on the Lopi insert... never had a "professional" cleaning job done until today, since I've been carefully watching the pipe and there never seemed to be much of a creosote problem.
However, I decided that it'd be a good idea to watch a real sweep do the job and learn from him. He's been doing this for 20 years, and following him up onto the roof and back down was indeed educational.
HOWEVER: he completely botched the re-assembly of the topside "baffle" firebricks and their supports: not being a particularly hands-on dude, I'd hesitated to disassemble those components myself. The bricks and their metal support brackets ended up haphazardly jammed into place completely incorrectly. Luckily, I noticed that something looked *wrong* while laying the first post-cleaning fire, and consulted the manual... ended up spending about 1/2 hour wrestling the components into proper alignment.
The upside is that I gained confidence in maintaining the unit myself, but what does one do in a case like this? I'm not about to go on Yelp or whatever slamming the guy, but it seems that a "professional" with 20 years' experience, working on a well-known system, should have known better. Thoughts? I'd hate to think how someone with absolutely no inclination to check things out afterward would have fared...
However, I decided that it'd be a good idea to watch a real sweep do the job and learn from him. He's been doing this for 20 years, and following him up onto the roof and back down was indeed educational.
HOWEVER: he completely botched the re-assembly of the topside "baffle" firebricks and their supports: not being a particularly hands-on dude, I'd hesitated to disassemble those components myself. The bricks and their metal support brackets ended up haphazardly jammed into place completely incorrectly. Luckily, I noticed that something looked *wrong* while laying the first post-cleaning fire, and consulted the manual... ended up spending about 1/2 hour wrestling the components into proper alignment.
The upside is that I gained confidence in maintaining the unit myself, but what does one do in a case like this? I'm not about to go on Yelp or whatever slamming the guy, but it seems that a "professional" with 20 years' experience, working on a well-known system, should have known better. Thoughts? I'd hate to think how someone with absolutely no inclination to check things out afterward would have fared...