Oops! Chimney sweeper crisis!

     Having a wood stove has been a bittersweet part of our everyday life here in the earth home. On one hand it’s been great having a warm fire to sit next to every night and it has definately helped keep the heating bill low. On the other hand, keeping the chimney and the stove clean has been a constant chore.

     We have been cleaning the chimney about every three weeks, which I’m told is more often than most people clean out their chimney. Since neither of us have grown up with a wood stove, we are staying on the safe side, rather than risking it.

     We have found that the chimney is rather easy to clean. What could be easier than living in an earth home to get on the roof of your home to clean out a chimney? We use a utensil that we found when we moved in. It consists of several fiberglass poles that can be screwed together with a large bristle cone at the bottom.

     We had just cleaned out the chimney a week ago, but yesterday I couldn’t figure out why smoke was coming out of the wood stove every time I opened the door. I walked outside and looked up to see if smoke was coming out of the chimney and it was. But later that night when my husband went on the roof and took a closer look at the top of the chimney, he found the top screen was full of gunk. It was an obvious mistake that told us we needed to stop burning something. We thought about all that we had been throwing away last week and realized we had been putting all of our junk mail, old magazines and other random material into the fire from time to time. It appeared that the plastics and “unnatural” material were what caused the giant blockage of black stuff at the top of the chimney. This was scary as a blockage of “stuff” can trigger a chimney fire, which is what we’re trying desperately to avoid.

     Because of the blockage we found last night, this morning my husband decided to clean the chimney out again. However, as he was scrubbing down the inside of the chimney, the fiberglass rod with the bristle cleaning cone at the end broke off from the rest of the cleaning rod and was stuck near the bottom. I panicked! “How in the world are we going to get it out!?!” I shouted to my husband. “I have no idea,” he said.  I couldn’t believe we managed to get this piece of cleaning rod stuck! What could we do?

     As you’re probably thinking right now, this is very hard to explain if you can’t see it. Since I wasn’t able to take a picture of this incident at the time, I have since reinacted what happened. Take a look at this picture. Can you figure out how my husband was able to remove the piece of cleaning rod from the chimney?

My hand is holding the piece of cleaning rod that disconnected itself from the rest of the cleaning rod. I'm simulating how it was stuck in the chimney. How do you suppose my husband was able to get it out? If you think you know, write a comment. I'll let you know if you're right! (Remember, there's another 8 feet of chimney on top of where it was stuck)