Hit my 500th flue cleaning last week... kinda surprised me

So I passed 500 flue cleanings last week in the Denver area, and I started thinking about two sides of this job. One says it's just pushing soot around, the other says you're actually making homes safer and catching problems. What number milestone made you feel like you were actually doing something real in this trade?

2 comments

2 Comments

the_jason3d ago

The first time I hit a hundred was when it clicked for me. Pulling a twenty-year-old wood stove insert that had a massive crack in the heat exchanger, right where you'd never see it until you're in there elbow deep. Homeowner had no clue, just thought it was burning a little smoky. That's when I stopped feeling like a janitor and started feeling like the guy who keeps people from waking up dead. After that, every cleaning where I pull out a bird nest or a creosote plug the size of a fist, I remember it's not just dirty work, it's catching problems before they turn into a five alarm fire.

lucas1592d agoTop Commenter

Holy crap, a crack in the heat exchanger you can't even see until you're practically inside the thing? That's terrifying. I never thought about how something like that could just leak CO into a house without anyone knowing. It's wild that the homeowner just thought it was smoking a little, when really they could've been a news story.

-1