Getting the chimney swept chez nous has been a challenge in the past.
The theory is that you should have it swept professionally once a year and a certificate is given to say it has been done. Theoretically this should stand us in good stead with our insurance company if we have a chimney fire and things go horribly wrong.
We have found that actually getting someone to come and do the job can be a challenge, not to mention expensive as we have two fireplaces, two wood burning fires and two flues so double the cost.
Two years ago we managed to extinguish a fire in our chimney before it became too serious. The chimney had been swept professionally only four months earlier but the wood burner had more or less been in daily use afterwards. Just to be sure of our position I phoned the insurance company to find out what the rules were and was somewhat alarmed to be told that if there was a house fire leading to a significant claim, an assessor would look at our chimney and decide if that was the cause of the fire. If it was, we would be deemed to be negligent and the claim would not be met. This makes sense as if the chimney was clean a chimney fire would be unlikely to happen anyway. In other words, the certificate of annual sweeping of the chimney (called ramonage) was no guarantee that an insurance claim would be met.
It was also clear that if we could have a chimney fire just four months after it was swept, once a year was not enough. The hassle of getting someone to come and do it, plus the mounting cost, was becoming a problem now that we were living in France all winter and the fires were in regular use.
Whilst we were in one of the local DIY stores not long after the incident, we spotted a soot hoover at a reduced price so we bought it and at the same time a set of poles and brushes so we could sweep the chimneys ourselves. For about the same outlay as the cost of one ramonage we were set up to sweep them as often as we liked.
It's not difficult and takes about half an hour for each woodburner from start to finish. Nick is getting quicker at it with practise!
The kitchen fire is more tricky to do because of its design. The flue ends behind the oven part of the stove and cannot be accessed from inside the fire. We had a lot of trouble getting someone to come and do it professionally because it had to be swept from the top, in other words from up on the roof.
We have solved this problem by having an access hole made in the pipe. A friend very kindly did this for us and also manufactured a removable cover for the hole. We can now sweep both of the chimneys for ourselves.
Nick sweeps the living room chimney about once a month and the kitchen one about every two months because we light it less often. It has saved us a small fortune and given us huge peace of mind.
Well done Nick! Now I imagining him doing his best DickVanDyke "Bert the Chimney Sweep" impression "Why, Mary Poppins, this is the cleanest kitchen I have ever seen" and singing 'Me Ol' Bamboo' as he works
ReplyDeleteMostly he grumbles a lot if the brushes get stuck rather than singing!
DeleteThis is very interesting. We’ve got a similar wood burner to your living room one, and we’ve been sweeping it ourselves for decades. It’s a flue that goes straight up inside the chimney, no bends, so it’s easy to do. I always go outside and check the brush has come out of the top! We do it once a year, before the first lighting of the stove (which is our main form of heating, used daily in winter). There’s never much soot/gunk in it. I’m surprised at sweeping once a month. Does Nick get much out of it?
ReplyDeleteOur fire has a sort of u-bend and sump at the back where the flue comes down behind it. That’s where flammable gunk collects and that’s what initially caught fire. Pulling it off and cleaning it out monthly stops the material from building up and it’s surprising how much collects. So while he’s doing that it’s not much more effort to sweep the chimney as well, which rarely produces much soot.
DeleteI suspect some wood produces more than others and at the time what we got delivered was not great quality. It can be hard to get wood around here as a number of suppliers have retired or just given up. This year the wood was a lot more expensive but is excellent…..we haven’t had to spend days sorting, splitting and cutting to the right length. All we had to do was to stack it!
Yes, wood quality is important. We always try to order it six months before we want to use it, because it’s never dry when it arrives, and green wood will produce gunk!
ReplyDeletegood for him! I keep imagining something out of Mary Poppins Ala Step in Time.
ReplyDelete