How not to clean a chimney!

[Copymutt]

My birthday, and one of the two days a year that I clean the chimney.
Been doing it for 40 yrs. Decided to speed up the monotony. Chucked the three sections of fiberglass brush rods into a cordless drill.
Yeah baby, power cleaned like I had stuck a boar pig down the hole, for about 30seconds. Then I hit a pipe joint ( slightly tighter) rod twisted and shattered resulting in numerous nasty glass foot long splinters. No real damage done, got plenty of spare rods. I kinda expected it might be an issue so was prepared to get out of the way.

 

[jack stand]

I thought that you were going to say..... now my brush and a few feet of shattered rod is stuck in the middle of the chimney. Glad that didn't happen.

 

[Half-fast eddie]

Thats only half a story. Need to know how many volts the batteries were, brand of the drill motor, rpm, amount of torque, degree of twist in the rods before they exploded, etc.

 

[Toxictom]

I made a chimney flail using weed eater line a few years ago. It worked excellent.

 

[nadogail]

Happy Birthday, may you have many more of them.

Days when everything goes well don't make for interesting stories.

 

[LS6 Tommy]

Days when everything goes well don't make for interesting stories.

Experience is what you get when you're expecting something else.

Happy Birthday, Copymutt!

Tommy

 

[kemarubae]

Nice cleaning experience. This is why it's good to always prepare for the worst case scenario when doing anything. Had it been you didn't had spare rod you might have been delayed

 

[kelpaso1]

Well you got what you asked for. Never use a drill to spin those FG rods. They are meant to be pushed and pulled straight up and down the chimney pipe.

 

[SportFury59]

FWIW ... I have a 18' metal chimney, 7" diameter for my wood stove. For cleaning chimney
I attached my 7" wire chimney brush to the end of a Mr. Long Arm paint extension pole. It
extends from 8' to 24' and works well. Don't have to take your gloves off when adjusting length.
Never did like those flimsy fiber glass rods. And you have the option of removing the brush in summer
and use pole for what it was built for - painting.