I recently purchased two Sooteater Systems (as opposed to one system and additional extension rods) and for the first time cleaned my chimney tonight. The systems seemed super easy to use and to understand. I carefully worked 9 rods up the chimney in short back and forth strokes in both forward and reverse drill directions. I then removed the rods one by one while repeating the short strokes and the forward and reverse drill directions. To be a bit safer about it, and not knowing how things should feel, I set the torque setting on the drill to a very low 4 (on scale of 20). I also allowed a corner of the plastic that I taped over the opening to stay open so that I could reach into the firebox and help hold the extension rods as aligned as possible to the stove pipe / chimney pipe.
Still when I was done and looked up through the stove pipe / chimney pipe, I could tell that on the opposite side of the stove pipe where the sooteater's whip head was pushing there was still some residue. I'm wondering whether it would actually work better without trimming the whip lines as the instructions instruct? This way even when the whip head is leaning slightly off center the longer whip lines would still clean the chimney. Since I have two heads with one trimmed and one untrimmed, I can simply swap whip heads and start again but before I do that I'd like to ask for thoughts on this. Thanks as always.
Still when I was done and looked up through the stove pipe / chimney pipe, I could tell that on the opposite side of the stove pipe where the sooteater's whip head was pushing there was still some residue. I'm wondering whether it would actually work better without trimming the whip lines as the instructions instruct? This way even when the whip head is leaning slightly off center the longer whip lines would still clean the chimney. Since I have two heads with one trimmed and one untrimmed, I can simply swap whip heads and start again but before I do that I'd like to ask for thoughts on this. Thanks as always.