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Pro tip: A firefighter in Tacoma told me my creosote logs were a waste of money
I was chatting with a firefighter after a routine inspection in a Tacoma neighborhood last fall. He saw a box of those chemical creosote logs in my truck and just shook his head. He said, 'Look, those things just turn the glazed stuff into a flaky mess that can still catch fire. They don't actually clean the chimney, they just change the form of the problem.' I mean, I'd been recommending them to customers for years as a maintenance thing between sweeps. But he had a point, I've seen that weird, crumbly residue they leave behind. So I stopped selling them at my shop and changed my spiel. Now I tell folks that a proper mechanical sweep is the only real way to remove the hazard, and those logs can give a false sense of security. Has anyone else had a customer push back after you stopped offering those products?
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val_williams5mo ago
That "false sense of security" is the real danger, because people might skip a real sweep.
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reesel505mo ago
Used to sell those logs too (figured they were a decent stopgap). Hearing that from a pro really shifted my view, it's just moving the gunk around.
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julia5495mo ago
Wow, that's wild. So did he say if that flaky stuff is actually more dangerous, or just harder to clean out?
2