Craig Dornak:
When that does ignite, it will completely destroy the flue, rendering the fireplace unusable.
I’m Craig from Lords Chimney. We’re about to clean a fireplace here. One of the reasons you need to clean a fireplace, as you can tell right here, the soot. This is creosote that is built up inside of the flue. That is flammable by nature. Over time, it will build up and it will coat the entire inside of your flue. Eventually, there is a possibility that that could ignite. When that does ignite, it will completely destroy the flue, rendering the fireplace unusable, and the only course of action after that is to replace your fireplace.
We clean the fireplace, clean the flue by running a brush up through the flue. This one is used for factory built fireplaces or manufactured fireplaces that go through the metal flue. We also have a brush that we use for the masonry fireplaces. It’s a separate brush. It spins on rods, and we actually clean the entire flue top to bottom. You should get this done once a year, depending on how much you use your fireplace. Yes, a lot of people think gas fireplaces are gas log sets. They don’t need to be cleaned. This is a wood-burning fireplace. Gas log sets do put off an amount of soot in and of themselves, and it is actually more acidic by nature, so those do need to be cleaned just as often as wood-burning fireplaces.
What I’m seeing here is the post-cleaning flue. The creosote has been removed. It’s a nice clean flue that is ready to be used for the winter.
