Clean Sweeper

Here in the Northeast, where fuel is expensive and hardwood is plentiful, many people are supplementing or even replacing their furnaces with wood-burning stoves. And of the myriad of stoves on the market, airtight models capable of holding a fire overnight are popular choices. Where there’s fire, however, particularly a slow- burning one, there’s creosote the tarry, inflammable product of incomplete combustion and the greener the wood that’s burned, the quicker the creosote accumulates in the chimney and the greater the chance there is of a chimney fire.

The wood-burner’s creosote problem keeps Bruce McLane ’72 in business. He is the proprietor of the Clean Sweep Chimney Service and during the busy months of the fall and early winter, he sweeps the chimneys, some of them with double and triple flues, of five or six houses a day. He had completed 150 sweeping jobs by mid-November and figured he had 200 yet to do before moving down to Washington, D.C., for the winter to clean chimneys there.

“Chuck McCann ’76 and a plumber friend of his from Thetford actually started the business about five years ago,” McLane says. “Chuck used the business to pay his way through Dart- mouth. After graduation I kept in touch with friends here and came up to visit frequently. I went to work with Chuck in April of 1976 and then bought the business the following September. During the spring and summer 1 worked on oil rigs in Louisiana. Last year I had two sweepers working for me, plus a secretary and an answering service, but this year I’m do- ing all the sweeping myself with the help of Claire Li, an erstwhile fashion designer from California, who does the inside work and the cleanup.”

It takes two people to clean a chimney one on the roof doing the sweeping and another in- doors making sure nothing comes down the chimney except soot and then cleaning up the mess, which can be considerable. McLane has found chimneys completely clogged with creosote and Claire has spent over two hours ex- cavating fireplaces. Some jobs at houses with steeply pitched roofs and high, capped chimneys require an additional helper, “Usually I jump on the chimney and sit on it,” McLane explains, “but if it's high, sometimes I need somebody to brace a ladder. Slate roofs are particularly tricky.”

There are different ways to clean chimneys, and McLane doesn’t have much respect for the so-called professionals who fill a burlap bag with chains or bricks and bounce it down the flue with a rope. “They run the risk of breaking tile or knocking mortar loose. I only use a wire brush, specially made for sweeping chimneys, and whaf s needed is vigorous scrubbing, rapidly moving the brush up and down.” The brushes come in different sizes to fit the various flue dimensions, and if the chimney widens near the base, the brush has to be changed.

When he climbs up on the roof McLane carries an old golf bag containing sections of steel pipe which are threaded on the ends. He screws the brush into the end of one pipe, scrubs a section of chimney, then adds another section of pipe, working his way down the flue. The brush with all the pipe attached weighs about 40 pounds, and there is a good deal of friction between the brush, which should fit the chimney snugly, and the chimney wall. If the chimney is capped and the inside can’t be reached with the pipe handles, McLane ties a rope to each end of the brush, lowers one rope to his helper at the bottom, and they pull the brush up and down.

McLane says he encounters three kinds of soot: “First, there's the fine, powdery soot from an oil furnace. The fumes from that can be terri- ble and sometimes I wear a gas mask. Then there’s the ordinary accumulation of creosote from a woodstove or fireplace. It’s flaky, crumbly, and flammable, but relatively easy to get out. Usually you can only see a few feet in- side a chimney, even with a mirror, so the only real way to keep tabs on the creosote is to clean it out regularly. Finally, there’s the stuff that comes from burning green wood. It’s shiny, smooth, and hard and almost impossible to remove. It’s also flammable. Setting a chimney fire intentionally doesn’t do a good job of clean- ing out the flue and it’s risky.”

McLane, who has a master’s degree in diplomatic history from George Washington University, admits that chimney cleaning is sometimes tedious, and always dirty, and that he doesn’t plan on staying a sweep forever. “But it has its compensations. You meet a lot of in- teresting people, see a lot of nice houses, and on good days it’s fun scampering around on roofs. It keeps me busy. One thing I’ve realized, though, is how difficult it is for the small businessman to deal with all the government regulations. That can really kill you.”