Cleaned my chimney pipe last week with a poly brush kit I purchased on Amazon. The stiff poly brush was way over kill for the small amount of fly ash deposits I removed. Believe a softer and denser brush would have cleaned better and would be easier running up and down the pipe. Found one on Amazon used for cleaning dryer vents, put it didn't have the 1/4 NPT threads that come on most rods. A side note. Was researching at the end of this burning season on whether you should cover your chimney cap over the summer months. I decided to leave mine uncovered. After the second little blue bird appeared in my stove, I now have it covered.
Soot eater is the residential style that the chimney experts use, experts typically use snaplok) definitly a great way to sweep!
Thanks, just placed my order on Amazon. Will use my poly bristle kit if I get heavier build up. I only burn extremely well seasoned hickory and white oak, so heavy creosote buildup isn't an issue.
I wanted to start this coming burning season off with a clean chimney pipe and test my brush and whether to go bottom up or top down. I went bottom up and the stiff poly bristle brush was a bear to push and I couldn't twist pushing up or pulling down. I have the soot eater kit and will try the top down with it after a few months burning. Plan on burning whatever amount of wood required to keep the house in the low 70s, so will be interesting to see the amount of soot buildup after a few cords.
I own a similar rutland brand stiff poly brush. It's really stick and great for breaking off hard deposits but the sooteater does a much better job so that's what I actually use. If I need to clean a short section right by the stove I will grab onto that rutland brush and push it in and out. It's a backup really.
I have come across this thread by searching “Snaplok”. I just bought some of their rods in various diameters for cleaning from top to bottom of my 45’ flue. I bought various heads and will use a Milwaukee 1/2 drive impact to turn the 45’ of rod with various heads. Those Snaplok products are not cheap but are very well engineered and made quality wise it appears. I found a Milwaukee brand chuck to fit the impact that will take a 7/16ths hex end adapter that you can get from Snaplok that then snaps into the rods and locks well. That set up should give me plenty of torque to rotary clean my 3 year old SS flue liner that I think I kinda got scammed into purchasing from a chimney sweep that I had to have come out once and clean flue in ‘21 after I had had surgery and couldn’t get on roof to clean it myself like I had for the first 21 years. He said my 8” clay tile did not pass inspection that he was required to do (which I understood) and he was required now by law to enter the flue as failed (because of a hair line crack in one of the sections. I built house in 1998-2000) Again I think I was railroaded into that but we ended up putting in a single one piece Copperfield brand Homesaver SS liner and poured in insulation all around it to fill void from 8” to the new 6”. The outlet from my Clayton furnace (circa 2000) is now 6” all the way to the top and man does it draw. Holy cow. Almost too much. A lot more than the 8” clay tile did. I’m anxious to use the Snaplok products to see how they work from. It looks like that rotary action (much like I’ve seen from soot eater) will be the berries. Stipulations I had before buying and installing the SS liner was he had to prove to me that insurance database showed clay tile replaced with new SS liner and I wanted 3 free flue cleanings and inspections (by lead supervisor who I was dealing with) performed to make sure insulation material was staying in place (which it has) and that all was looking good. However they were certain they could simply clean from basement with no visit to the roof. I said not happening and you need to go to roof and brush down as well (10/12 pitch intimidated them, but I had done it for 21 years straight and multiple times a burning season). They wanted the easier path and they just using a Wohler oversized poly brush on a solid one piece flexible coil. Their brush did a good job so I have no doubt that my new Snaplok set up will work even better I hope. I have heard that you don’t want to get too rough on those SS liners and need to only use poly brushes. Not sure if anyone can de-bunk that or not. I’ve been told that the Copperfield Homesaver is one of the better and heavier gauged liners, but I don’t want to damage it in anyway. Just wanted to let you guys know that Snaplok products at first blush are exceeding my expectations of a product that is gonna last a while.
This is probably a lame answer, however, the best chimney brush is the one that you will regularly use. Last week I had a rather unnerving incident where in between August 2024 and last week, a squirrel had built a nest in the chimney pipe and blocked all draft when I lit the first fire of the season. My chimney brush is heavy metal wire on fiberglass rods and it requires two wrenches to properly assemble. It's a beast of a setup but it does get the pipe clean. Playing Devil's advocate, a soft chimney brush can glide over deposits with the user being aware. The metal brush setup I have will stop cold if it hits a deposit. It's kind of funny to watch, I assemble 30+ feet of chimney rods, put the setup inside the pipe cleanout and then run towards the chimney like a pole vaulter. Same applies for pulling the brush back out. Repeat 5 times.
I am the OP and I just wanted to update my original post to advise that the impact wrench to turn the Snaplok rods was a great idea (at first). What I’ve learned that was not such a great idea was to use an impact that the square male end that the quick connect adapter snaps on to needs to have a ball detent to pop into the ball detent hole of the adapter. I learned that once you get about 30’ of those heavy duty Snaplok rods on and because of their weight, they will come off as you raise the impact wrench up. I barely caught the 30’ of rod with my left hand as it headed towards the bottom of my 45’ flue. I don’t know what I would have done had I not caught it. The rods are stiff enough that I would not have been able to bend and flex it on into basement through the thimble. I’ve got one with a ball detent now. I think that will work going forward. I know it’s going to work better.
Interested in the thread as I may be looking for a different brush. The chimney guy who came to look at extending with class A asked me to see the brush I had when I told him that I had cleaned the chimney. I think I've got a Rutland (but not 100% on that). He says he thinks it may be metal core bristles and that I shouldn't use it. So I need to figure out if it really is metal core, and if so find a non-metal core 6 inch brush. And as to covered and blue birds, we had quite a few get in the stove this summer, so I plan on making some kind of screen with chicken wire or similar, to go around the pipe and butt up under the top cap.
I wouldn't trust a ball retainer either...having been a mechanic most of my life, I can't tell you the number of times that a socket took off, just under its own weight! A pin style retainer would be better, but that's generally for larger drives (1" is common) but you could probably make up something custom pretty easily
Here's a link...dunno why it says that, the link works, at least for me Whoops, we couldn't find that.
