Chimney sweeps trade secrets at convention

Published 5:00 am Saturday, May 5, 2001

Even chimney sweeps like to talk shop.

A desire for camaraderie in a changing profession brought about 50 chimney sweepers to The Riverhouse resort in Bend this weekend from locations as far as Canada and Indianapolis for their annual May Day Conference, sponsored by the Oregon Chimney Sweeps Association.

The sweepers shared personal chimney-sweeping inventions, attended workshops and talked about ideas to raise public awareness of a service many sweepers said homeowners often overlook.

Dan Dilley, an association-certified chimney sweeper since 1983, came from Washington for his fifth consecutive year at the conference. He talked passionately of the diligence and adventure of his job.

”Sweeping the chimney is the dirty foot that gets you in the door,” Dilley said. ” … You’re never in the same place twice and every day is a challenge. The customers’ hobbies most interest me. You see so many different things in different people’s homes.”

Dilley said the conference provides a forum for sweepers to enjoy the company of others who tackle soot-filled flues.

”We went out to dinner last night at 7 p.m. and after 9 p.m. we were still sitting around and talking about everything from bad employees to the do’s and don’t’s of business,” he said.

Alan Bapp, a sweeper of 24 years in Idaho, travels to the convention every May. He said last year’s conference convinced him to change his chimney-sweeping company to offer a service to clean household dryer vents.

Building a multi-tasked service can help chimney sweepers promote their business, said Jim Brown, owner of Brown’s Chimney Services of Bend. Brown coordinated the conference.

Brown expressed frustration that certified chimney sweepers are often taken for granted.

”Even with all the different promotional items, I still have people come to me and tell me, ‘Oh I don’t need to clean my chimney, a good chimney fire will clean it for me,’ ” he said. ”They don’t understand the fire can damage the chimney because they can’t see it on the outside.”

Twelve percent of the 3,455 residential structure fires in 1999 in Oregon began in a chimney, said Sally Gilpin, community education coordinator for the State Fire Marshal’s Office in Oregon. As many as 78 percent of the 1999 chimney fires were caused by a failure to keep the chimney clean, according to Fire Marshal statistics.

Gilpin recommends residents who use a fireplace as a main source of heat hire a certified sweeper once a year and other residents hire one every other year.

The chimney sweeping industry kicked off in the 1970s during a national energy crisis. As oil and gas prices skyrocketed, residents moved to alternative heating like burning wood, said Steve Pietila, a Portland-based chimney sweeper who taught a seminar at the conference.

Pietila said he began sweeping chimneys in 1979 after a number of chimney fires were sparked because residents were learning to operate wood stoves.

Chimney fires are caused by creosote, a highly combustible build-up of wood chips that were never completely burned, Pietila said.

If creosote lines the flue and catches fire, the walls can become so hot that flue tiles expand and crack, potentially sparking a chimney fire.

Tom Urban, an Iowa chimney sweeper, demonstrated his personal invention at the conference a specialized closed-circuit camera designed to better identify creosote and cracked flues and reduce the risk of a chimney fire.

He created the camera called the ”Chim-scan” in 1983 and has upgraded it over subsequent years.

The camera can be attached to a rod and inserted into the flue from the ground or the roof, Urban said.

The camera records the inside of the flue, which helps residents and insurance inspectors to reference chimney conditions and identify the cause of chimney defects.