Masonry Magazine July 1979 Page. 13
Oregon "Sweep" Maintains 19th Century Traditions for Fireplace Safety
When the homeowner heard the price for cleaning his chimneys, he said, "Forget it, I'll clean them myself!" "Okay." replied the chimney sweep with a shrug. "Soot yourself." Reader's Digest.
Alan McKean didn't coin that joke but, if his sense of humor is indicative of all chimney sweeps, it wasn't invented by a gagwriter or pundit either. McKean, a three-year veteran of the rooftops, insists that you've got to have a sense of humor to do the job.
"Look," he explains, referring to his all-black garb and top hat, "we dress funny, we stand up on rooftops, and attract attention to our work by blowing a horn. Little kids come up all the time and make fun of me."
McKean operates Alan's Chimney Service in Eugene, Ore., work that requires him to clean chimneys and make small repairs and install dampers.
"I'm not a mason," he says. "but I do know fireplaces and chimneys. I don't like to mess with it (repair) too much because it's not too efficient a use of my time, but I do repair loose bricks and cracks and tell the owners if anything serious is wrong."
While you may think damper installation is necessary only in older, almost antique fireplaces, McKean says that some newly built ones lack dampers, too.
"This story is going to appear in a masonry publication so I'm a little reluctant to criticize masons, but some of the fireplaces I've seen don't do justice to the trade," McKean says. "I don't know who's building the inferior ones, but it's too bad there's not some way to regulate fireplace construction."
McKean, a former Southern Illinois University student with an interest in alternative energy forms, got into sweeping chimneys after reading an article on the trade.
"I figured it would be a good way to 'shoehorn' myself into the energy field," he says. He moved to the Eugene area last year after apprenticing to a chimney sweep in Marin County, Calif.
A sweep can clean a chimney in a little over an hour. McKean says, "if you really get on it." The task is simple: merely run a brush from the flue to the shelf, then brush accumulations from the firebox walls. The preparation and cleanup takes more time. McKean first places large cloths around the hearth, then inserts a vacuum cleaner hose into the firebox. Those precautions prevent soot from drifting around the living room. While he is capable of cleaning chimneys from the bottom, McKean says it's much easier on his equipment to clean from the top, and, weather permitting, chooses to do so. Most of the residue is then cleaned off the smoke shelf.
He recommends a yearly inspection: most fireplaces should be cleaned every two to three years, under the best of circumstances. "And if you burn a lot of trash, more often than that."
Ready to go, he sweeps 'em clean.
Alan McKeon on top of things.
He says he's seen fireplace chimneys into which zero clearance stoves have been vented become almost totally clogged in six months. "When that creosote burns, it can get hot enough to melt the mortar, regardless of the talents of the mason," McKean asserts.
Chimney sweeps weren't always college-educated individuals, of course: they were very seldom educated at all. Sweeps generally are considered relics from 19th century England, when they were the poor people who crawled up the chimneys of the wealthy, laying claim to whatever diseases and body sores the soot inflicted.
Modern-day sweeps, armed as they are with advanced equipment, still carry forward some of the tradition of their forebearers. The National Chimneysweep Guild flourishes in this country today, holding annual national conventions to discuss new techniques and advancements. Still, the appearance of today's sweep is practically indistinguishable from a sweep a century ago they outfit themselves in black from head to toe. McKean explains:
"The English costume, which we wear today, goes back to the last century when sweeps were among the poorest of people. During this time squalor and disease created a short life expectancy for the masses. Consequently, undertakers were among the wealthiest of people. As their clothes got old or soiled, they'd throw them into the trash bins where the poorest of people would eagerly dig them out."
The tradition to the black top hat-has remained.
(Reprinted with permission from "Trowel Talk," a publication of the Southern Oregon Masonry Industry Fund.)
MASONRY/JULY, 1979 13