You dont need to clean it often either. If your burning dry pine and burn it hot at the beginning rather than a low smoulder from start to finish you could wait 5 years plus.
saskianz,
Mar 15, 4:22am
A bird came down the chimney yesterday and was trapped behind the fire screen.I hoped it would clean it if it fluttered enough.
taipan4,
Mar 15, 4:55am
yup with the new building codes etc we are becoming, sorry have become a nanny state & will need someone to wipe our bottys soon
taipan4,
Mar 15, 4:57am
oh balls
rsr72,
Mar 15, 5:26am
The govt is surely working to fill that glaring gap as we speak.
oh_hunnihunni,
Mar 15, 5:47am
Yeah, right. All those resins in pine just magically disappear when spring comes, eh!
martin11,
Mar 15, 5:55am
Have a look on the ECAN site about phasing out old fire places .and log burners in clean air zone one
lol cat amoung the pigeons.We have used manuka branches too. seems to do an ok job.My son and I looked like oliver twistwhen we finished.that was last year.I might get someone in this year just to make sure its all ok.
bestgames,
Mar 15, 6:32am
In canterbury. it is disgusting in Chch on a cold still night it just stinks of smoke. No problem in places that have a bit of wind. I think Napier has the same thing underway - or it is just the open fireplaces.
rhodd,
Mar 15, 6:53am
Chimney sweeping every two years or whatever is a joke if your burning hot. Take the top off and it should do with a few screws or if a spinning cowel just straight off in your hands and put your finger in and swipe. You will realise that sweeping chimneys every year or two years is a complete rort and want to do your own franchise for ripping of suckers afraid of height and dying in a fire (supposedly but how many chimney fires have you heard about, yet even resulting in death!)
shiyo,
Mar 15, 7:48am
I clean mine 3-4 times over a winter, dammed if I am paying somebody to do that. And yes it is dry firewood ( 3-4 years old). Modern coal/wood range type of fire and needs it that often to keep the oven hot and fire burning well. Has side gaps and underneath the oven to be done with a long bottle brush, so all gets done at the same time.
I do mine after the chimney sweep made a crap job and the fire went worse than before. If an insurance company gets shirty then take them to court. How many fires are caused by competent homeowners cleaning their own flues! Less than nothing. Its the people who don't clean their flues or chimneys at all that are risking chimney fires. An insurance company will find any out clause.sue them!
onenana,
Mar 15, 8:22am
Don'tknow that this applies to ALL areas but where i am, if you have a chimney fire YOU have to pay for the fire brigade call out IF you haven't had your flu/chimney cleaned in the previous 12 months. The guy who does mine is a volunteer fireman so I figure I'm OK.I can remember our chimney catching fire when i was very young (in the old dayslol) and my Dad calmly climbed on the roof with wet sacks to put it out. We just thought that was normal. The things our parents/grandparents did! I can also remember him throwing BATTERIES in the fire. It might have cleaned the chimney but the lounge was black with soot and we were stressed to the max for weeks. Never did find out whether he did it on purpose or not. Do it yourself chimney cleaning! That method definitly NOT recommended:o(
kuaka,
Mar 15, 8:38am
We bought a chimney brush last year, but didn't actually get around to using it.We will use it soon.Previous years we have had a "professional" chimney sweep in to do it. They "inspect" the woodburner, chimney and flue and issue a scrap of paper to say they have cleaned the chimney and inspected everything.Right.Wrong.They don't actually get in the roof space and check the condition of the flue between the ceiling and the top of the roof where the flue goes out into the open air.Now I wonder what condition that stretch of flue is in. Who knows!Does anyone care!They profess to have inspected everything, but they don't.I guess if the insurance can find a way to wriggle out of a payment, they will do so.Why give them the opportunity!Do it yourself, and make sure it's done.
bestgames,
Mar 15, 8:41am
Or move to an insurer that doesn't make you use a contractor for something done yourself.
fibertrix,
Mar 15, 12:36pm
I clean my chimneys once a year weather they needit or not by tying a heavy chain to a long rope and swirling itaround and up and down.
pauldw,
Mar 15, 5:32pm
You'd only see the outer section of the flue. All you could tell from looking at that is whether you have water leaking past the flashing.
hilt_dwane,
Mar 15, 7:31pm
When we last lived in a house with a chimney, the sweep would give us his card each time and date the back with the date he did the job. Giving us warning to keep in a safe place in case we needed to make a claim as the insce co would need evidence of when it was last cleaned and by whom.
pauldw,
Mar 15, 8:54pm
A professional sweep would say that as it means business for him. Not all insurance companies have the same policy. Check with you own insurance co if you are concerned that cleaning your own chimney isn't sufficient.
oh_hunnihunni,
Mar 15, 9:03pm
Uh huh. My first learning experience was cooking with an Aga stove, which had been installed by the owner a year previously and the flue not cleaned for over a year. It burned hot, and set the ceiling beams alight and the fire took the top of the house off. Second one was in our own property with a log burner which was commercialliy installed into an existing fireplace and chimney and the installer like you said it didn't need cleaning for the first two years. The firebrigade toldus different when they came one cold Taupo night to put the chimney fire out - not the flue, the chimney - that's what burning 'hot' does. If you look at a flue where pine has been burnt you'll see a candy floss of resin threads, that catch and hold the soot. Given the right conditions, that lot goes up and you lose the roof. Cleaning a chimney isn't hard, I know, we got religious about it after the second fire. To be safe it needs doing twice, beginning of the season, and midway through. Best safe than sorry. Nothing like the smell of your own house burning down around you to inspire a deep learning experience.
elliehen,
Mar 16, 9:45am
A hefty branch of freshly-cut gorse makes a great chimney sweeper :)
echoriath,
Mar 16, 11:36am
Cleaning chimneys is the least of our problems. The real question runs more like this: In houses more than 80 years old, what is the state of the mortar! What chimney cleaners look at that! If you use a chimney sweep, you better be sure they sign off on the condition of the mortar.
Having removed at least eight chimneys (serving at least a dozen separate ranges/burners/fireplaces if that makes sense), the really shocking part is when you see the timber behind the bricks, i.e., the framing and other timber in the wall that is up against the bricks as the fireplace climbs through the ground floor (and first floor if a two story house). At least if it goes through a roof space you can have a good look at it.
The number of times I saw charred (as in charcoalised) timber that must have failed to catch ONLY for want of air is positively shocking. The reason is that the mortar weakens and fails over time because (in part) of the composition of the mortar.
In repointing my chimney (from the roofline upwards), I can literally remove pieces of mortar that are the full depth of the bricks without tools. It just falls out of place. And there's only one course of bricks! Granted, it will be worse above the roofline where exposed to weather, but when removing lime-mortared bricks, the mortar often falls loose from the bricks with no effort whatsoever.
But you know what's worse! What happens in the next earthquake!
Anyone with chimneys on their house should take a serious look at how they heat their house and the true state of their chimneys. No sugarcoating the truth.
Do we need laws requiring people do this! Well, no, but sooner rather than later is the time to address the problem. When chimneys fail catastrophically, they tend to come down like several tons of bricks.
auburn4,
Mar 16, 12:05pm
I think we may have had the same sweep as mine does exactly that too.
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