Has anyone acquired / had a go with one of these-type things?
Background: we have a small woodstove, connected to a traditional 60s semi's fireplace, chimney pronounced fit for use by the stove fitter, i.e. no stove liner.
Cheers John
I have swept chimneys in the past with traditional brushes, and the last time we had our stove chimney swept the sweep used traditional brushes.
Some sets are viewable below the item you linked.
My biased view is that this is just a gimmick because sweeping the traditional way with fibreglass poles and a densely bristled brush seems to work fine.
No fighting with a power drill that is trying to wind up a long flexible set of rods. Consider what would happen if it did manage to wind up the rods and then the whole shooting match wanted to unwind.
YMMV of course.
Cheers
Dave R
Seem expensive compared to a convetional set of rods & brush. Can't see spinning it with a drill adding that much compared with manual manipulation.
Tim
I see in the reviews one had it come apart inside the chimney.......Ouch!
A chimney sweep cleaned our chimney a few months ago and said he wouldn't use those spinning things as they did a poor job.
No need to use shortening services for amazon URLs, just chop the unnecessary crap off after the ASIN id, so that
becomes
No good at all for wood stoves as it won't remove the tar/creosote. I have a metal chimney. I remove the top section and scrape the tar out. The tar is all in the last foot or so. (Where the flue gases meet the cold air.)
But see this. Various ideas.
What you need is a good blaze once a week. Get a good fire going and then put some newspaper in on top. Burns the tars off of the chimney. If your liner has no insulation between it and the masonry, you will always have problems.
Don't do this if you have a big tar accumulation, you could have a major fire. It needs doing regularly to stop big build ups.
These crinkly liners are a major problem.
I?ve swept a couple of chimneys, when we moved into new (to us) houses with gas fires just to be sure they were clean. I just hired bushes for a few hours. It doesn?t take long and, with a gas fire, it is a one of job.
Traditional brushes and rods are easy enough to use.
Yes indeed. Apparently the chimneys in this ouse having a crank in the middle over an alcove can be a nightmare to get swept and indeed get the brushes out of. Luckily its not in use and I have thought several time of getting them removed but the chaos and rebuilding all for an extra foot of floor space is far too costly. Brian
Eee well you live and learn! Thanks a lot for that Andy.
Re the rest of the discussion:
- Our woodstove is small, and fits into the original fireplace of this
60s house. Hence, not only is the aperture to the chimney very small, but there is an immediate elbow or two above it. Traditional sweep brushes will not fit (I know I can get smaller, but...); and traditional rods will not manage the initial twists (I have some; I tried them: too stiff).- Our neighbours had a professional sweep in last year, who said that he now only used the "whip" type (as he called it): faster, and actually better.... is what he said (but then, he would).
- I'm asking here, precisely because of the reservations mentioned so far :-)
Thanks chaps John
Some similar problems in my house. Standard brush was too big so I just trimmed the bristles. I also found it was a lot easier to pass the rods through the chimney without the brush. I?m lucky in the the chimney top is easy to access so I push the rods up ?backwards? and fit the brush to the bottom and then seal up the fireplace. I can then sweep upwards from the roof (much easier to pull a brush through a twisty chimney than push).
Don?t know if any of these suggestions are helpful but you never know...
Tim
Conventional rods and brush won't go past an elbow, as the OP stated.
Makes the relatively floppy "bristles" spin out to reach the sides of the flue.
Operator error. Didn't make sure that all the joints had properly latched before shoving it up the chimney. The fact that he had to then modify the latches to make them work reliably is more telling.
I'd also want a good quality all round crimp between the metal end and rod, possibly even a rivet passing through the sleeve and rod end. Some of the end to rod connections on some of those on Amazon don't look very good to me.
In traditional easy to sweep chimneys? NSS!
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