The Chimney Sweep

Our wood stove suddenly started smoking like a bad boy. It billowed out into the house in huge clouds and burned our eyes whenever we opened the door. It stealthily crept out of seams in the stove pipe and oozed along the ceiling. It was insidious.

We have a brush to brush out the stove pipe (it came with the house) but upon inspecting the stove we realized the pipe doesn't come straight down into the fire box; the air flows kind of in and around inside the fire box before going up the pipe. So, if we climbed up on the roof and started knocking creosote loose, we figured it'd just fall into the inaccessible parts of the stove and clog it up. We tried removing some parts inside the stove, so the soot and creosote would fall into the fire box where we could shovel it out, but the head of the first bolt just broke clean off. It was about then that we decided to call in the experts.

It took us a couple of days to find someone who would come all the way out to our place and clean the stove pipe. We are not close to any city. He and his helper showed up promptly when they said they would, did a thorough, quick job and left no mess. He stuck a shop-vac in the stove and kind of snaked it up to where the creosote and junk fell down. Duh.


The guy we hired was colorful, as you can see from the photograph. He wasn't shy at all, and when we asked if we could take his picture, all he said was "be sure to get the phone number in there!"