Does the technician need to get on the roof?

Have you ever avoided taking your car to get an oil change because you know you need to get new tires? Well, the same sort of thing happens with homes. Sometimes, people know they have a fragile roof, so they won’t call a chimney sweep because they don’t want anyone to crack tiles. They still use their chimney, they just put off cleaning it. Just like the car, this can be a huge problem.

So the question that people often ask is: does the chimney technician need to get on the roof to clean the chimney? The short answer is yes. However, there is more to it so don’t let this be a reason to skip a chimney sweep.

Each technician in the chimney sweeping industry has a personal preference. Also, techniques, while similar, do vary from company to company. At this day and age, many, if not most, chimney sweeps clean the chimney from the bottom of the flue. They use power tools that often times clean way more efficiently than the older brushes. Sweeps who clean using this method will still go up on the roof at some point to finish up the cleaning and to do an inspection.

The inspection is a very important part of a chimney sweep inspection. This inspection gives the homeowner an accurate idea about what is going on in the chimney. If you’re wondering about inspections click here for some more information. It should never be assumed that any part of the inspection can be skipped.

In our case, however, we would rather sweep a chimney for a customer even if we can’t get to the roof. We use a camera to access as much of the flue as we can and we creatively gather as much information as possible. Knowing that that sort of service is not ideal, we will mention in our report that the inspection was insufficient and a potential fire hazard may still exist in the un-inspected parts of the chimney.

Ultimately, however, we feel it is way better to get the oil change than to drive the car until it dies.