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Two flues in one house on Tuesday, one was full of a bird nest and 30 years of soot, the other was spotless
Got called out to this old Victorian near downtown Salem on Tuesday, homeowner says she hears scratching in the walls every spring. I get up on the roof and the main flue is completely blocked, pulled out a starling nest the size of a basketball plus what had to be decades of creosote built up in there. Took me almost 3 hours with the rotary rods and a shop vac to get that thing breathing again. But here's the weird part, the second flue on the same chimney was spotless, like somebody had cleaned it recently even though she swears nobody's touched it in 15 years. I'm standing there scratching my head wondering if the birds were using it as a vent or something. Best guess is the draft on that side pulls so well it self cleans to some degree, but I've never seen two flues on one stack be that different. Any of you ever run into a setup like that where one side stays clean and the other turns into a haunted house?
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taylorc407d ago
The "draft pulls so well it self cleans" part sounds right to me. If that flue is on the taller side of the stack or gets better air flow across the top, it stays hot and dry, so creosote never gets a chance to build up. The blocked one was probably a shorter run or sat in the wind shadow of the roof, which lets the smoke cool and stick.
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