Professional chimney-sweep fail

[PDXpyro]

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...

 

[Oregon aloha]

But how did your chimney look? That would be how to judge his work. There are so many stoves and baffle systems out there it would be difficult to remember how they all went. Did you offer him your manual so he could put it back together right?

 

[Nick Mystic]

If the sweep took that part of your stove apart as part of his sweep service I would definitely follow up with him or his boss. If he took it apart as an extra due to you asking him take it apart for cleaning that isn't normally included in his service, then you should probably cut him some slack since he could have been trying to do a favor and just got in over his head, so to speak. Regardless, I think it's important to give people feedback on their work. I believe when people let shoddy work slide it reinforces the worker to be shoddy in the future since as far as he knows the customer was satisfied with his service. When you give such feedback I find it is received much better if it's done in a non-aggressive fashion. When you come on with anger in your voice the other person most likely will become defensive and then he/she misses your message. If you offer it in a calm, informative manner you're likely to get a better outcome.

 

[PDXpyro]

(Following up after about 24 hours):

Oh, I wasn't angry about it, and didn't notice the faulty reassembly until a couple hours after he'd left. He seemed to regard the taking-apart of the top baffle bricks as a normal part of the cleaning, in order to gain better access to the crud sitting on the bypass damper area. I just thought that it was a bit odd for an experienced sweep to mess up something that he'd just taken apart himself.

It's really no big deal, and in fact worked out in my favor since I'm now comfortable dealing with those parts of the stove after fixing his mistakes. I'll probably just let it slide completely... the actual chimney-work was fine, and perhaps now I'll be confident enough to do future cleanings myself after gearing up a bit more.

 

[Oregon aloha]

Check with your fire department on loaner brushes and poles. I just barrow the brush and extensions and do my own sweep. It beats paying for and storing the gear.

 

[PDXpyro]

Check with your fire department on loaner brushes and poles. I just barrow the brush and extensions and do my own sweep. It beats paying for and storing the gear.

Good idea, and I'll see whether that's an option.