TOP DOWN, BOTTOM UP, CHIMNEY CLEANING COULD BECOME THE NEW FETISH ACTIVITY UNLESS THE FIRE BRIGADE DO IT ‘THE DIRTY WAY’!
As tidy as I am, cleaning my chimney has never been on my list of priorities on my house cleaning routine and I guess that’s half the problem; no one thinks about dealing with this neglected area of our properties and potentially we could be storing up big problems for ourselves.
We don’t live in an old fashioned ‘chimney culture’ where everyone had an open fire and Americans with fake cockney accents swung over the rooftops singing cheery chimney cleaning songs!
I clean out my wood burner, give the glass a polish, relegate the basket of logs to the garage and that, dear readers, officially spells the end of winter in my household. I never give any thought to the chimney, but this year as we’ve had plenty of fires I thought I would. That was probably my first mistake; it looks like you need a degree just to contemplate which way you want to attack the chimney, seriously. It’s either, rod method, top down, rod method bottom up, weight method or dual line.
That was just for starters. Rod method, top down necessitated a trip on the roof to re-enact my own ‘chim chim-in-ay’ moment. Er, no thank you, as outgoing as I am this is never going to happen! In addition the list of equipment and safety concerns was making this little housekeeping excursion look less than likely.
The rod method, bottom up, when I stopped blushing, seemed eminently preferable but not only did I have to source rods and brushes but had to ensure everywhere was sheeted up to prevent masses of soot coating the whole sitting room. ‘Tarps and drop cloths’ are the key words here, in case you want to impress anyone at a cocktail party!
The other methods involved a partner, a line, weights and pulleys and I’m afraid at this point I had a lie down with a bar of chocolate, much more sensible.
If you check the internet there are endless interesting articles on tackling the job of cleaning a chimney but by the time you’ve bought all the safety equipment, scared yourself silly at the thought of working at height, ‘tarped and drop clothed’ yourself and the house into oblivion (apparently it’s not great news to skimp on tarps and drop cloths tee hee) I had lost the will to live.
I am not a lazy person and I am not in the habit of outsourcing my cleaning responsibilities, although saying that, the idea is extremely appealing, however, chimney cleaning is not for the feint-hearted and I think it’s time to call in a professional and hire a chimney cleaner.
In all seriousness a build-up of tar and soot is a fire hazard plain and simple and can cause an intense chimney fire, should it spread to the roof you can be in big trouble and is a definite fire brigade call out. Ideally chimneys should be swept professionally every year and unless you happen to have the odd ’tarp’ hanging around I’d leave it to those who do.
Pigsty.ie has all the technology to sort you out, just shout, ‘Clean my chimney!’ and they’ll send someone to deal with it, either bottom up or top down.
Whether you need your chimney cleaning in Dublin or Cork Pigstye.ie can save the day! So what are you waiting for? Get your chimney cleaned right now before the fire brigade do it the dirty way!