As wood, coal and other fuels burn in your fireplace, they produce smoke. As the smoke rises up your chimney a chemical called creosote (also known as soot) sticks to the inside of the chimney. As the soot builds up it can narrow and cause blockages inside the chimney, reducing the efficiency and ability of your fires to burn, causing smoke to come back into the room, soot breaking away and falling down the chimney, and worst of all, a chimney fire.

Unfortunately some people do not appreciate how important getting your chimney swept is. With 31,000 chimney fires occuring every year, prevention is the best action. Some people have been led to beleive that lined chimneys do not need to be swept. This is incorrect and dangerous. Most stoves are connected to a 5 or 6 inch liner and will need to be swept an absloute minimum of once per year.

When burning wood, make sure you burn properly stored and dried hardwood. This gives you a longer burning, hotter fire, and there is less of a build up of soot inside your chimney. Burning wet wood will tar up your chimney and give less heat. Remember when burning wood you need your chimney swept at least once a year or once per season when in use. Usually before using your appliance for the autumn/winter season, and then again half way through if you are using your stove or fire heavily.

Oil and Gas appliances should be swept every one to two years, as they produce significantly less chemicals when burnt.

Birds love to make chimneys their homes. If you suspect that you have a feathery family take up residence in one of your flues, then please give me a call and I will be able to remove to remove the nest and fit a bird guard/ rain cowl to the top of your chimney to stop it happening again. Be warned though that once a nest is made, the birds have to fully vacate the nest before any action can be taken.

Getting your chimney swept is an essential part of keeping up your house not only clean, but safe. The best news is that I'm here to save you doing it yourself!

Chimney Sweeping Technique

Power sweeping involves sweeping the chimney with specially designed rods and brushes powered by a cordless drill at the end. The brush spins at up to 1200 rotations per minute, sweeping the chimney clean more efficiently than ever before. The brush expands within the flue to thoroughly sweep sides, corners, shelves and ledges, ensuring no section of chimney is missed in the cleaning process. I also have other brush heads to be able to power sweep tarred chimneys, quickly plough through bird nests, and retrieve rods and brushes left behind by amateur sweeps.

Whip style heads are only used for the toughest of jobs and we the majority of our jobs we use a mole head brush on our power sweeping rods. These are very similar to the traditional brush heads and are softer on the chimney or liner, whilst providing an extremely efficient clean.

When sweeping your chimney, I always lay dust sheets in front of the fireplace, and the chimney opening is sealed with either plastic sheets, foam bricks and dust sheets to contain any soot or debris that falls from the flue. A 2000w dual motor Hazard Dust Vacuum is connected to extract any airbourne particals. This guarantees your home is kept clean and soot free!