Fall Chimney Cleaning

Every Fall or as some call it Autumn it is time to prep your heating systems for the coming winter. This is especially true for those of us with wood stoves!

Addie and I try to get our chimney inspected and cleaned before mid September each year and scrub it clean. We also check it periodically throughout winter as well while it is being used. NOTHING is worse then a poorly maintained chimney except maybe one that catches FIRE!

Tools of the trade around here. Two fiberglass chimney sweep poles with a 6 inch wire brush. A 3inch wire brush with a plastic vinyl type flexible stick attached. A Swiss Army tool this time (for the pliers). A long ladder (preferably one that gets along with you and the chimney). And a well placed tree stump that just happened to grow in the exact right place years before as if it knew I was going to need it some day to support my ladder for this . Lets not forget a face mask.

Now we take a small brush and clean off all around the chimney base. Bye Bye Spidey Friends!!!

Here we remove the bottom of the chimney stack carefully and slowly. This is where the ash will collect that gets sucked up the flue when you have a good draft going.

After you remove the bottom stuff it is time to climb. Go up and get the chimney cap because that needs cleaning to and may as well dust off the edge of the roof where it meets the chimney as well…

Now we get a scrubbing. Each piece gets brushed off. Don’t want any black creosote on anything.

Now I have to go up and do the hard part. I take the wire brush and fiberglass rods and use them to scrub the inside of the whole chimney...

Now that it's done lets look at the inside shall we…

OK it is nice and shiny clean now. Addie’s turn.

That’s my dirty wife Addie cleaning out the through the wall section. She has smaller arms and a better back so she can reach inside bending around corners easier.

Now that it is all clean we reassemble it.

I noticed that there was some blemishes that appeared to be wearing on the protective sheen of the chimney T section. So we use some stove paint to cover those spots up before they decided to rust through over winter. It would be a major task for us to replace this part next year when we could just use some simple paint right now to solve the issue preventing any further damage.

All done for now. We will check it as needed over winter while we use it and repeat this procedure when required.