Chimney sweep brushes are among essential kits used by chimney sweeps to clean a chimney. The right tooling is necessary for a great cleaning job.
Flue & Chimney Cleaning Brush
Without one, little can be achieved in keeping your chimney clean. Chimney sweep brushes aren’t only for professional use.
DIYers will find it useful for cleaning up their chimneys.
While this is true, DIY chimney cleaning isn’t recommended as there are lots of limitations attached to the process. However, that isn’t what we’re interested in.
Here, we’ll be discussing the different chimney brushes to include in your chimney cleaning kit.
With the right brushes, dislodging chimney soot and creosote wouldn’t be a problem.
Using Cleaning Brushes For Flues In Wooden Chimney
Wood burning chimneys have the most deposits of combustion byproducts. These are mostly comprised of soot and creosotes that form over the surface of flue liners.
These deposits have to be cleaned often to enhance chimney functioning. Failure to clean your chimney when necessary results in a steady buildup of creosote and soot.
These eventually become tougher to remove and increase the chance of chimney fires that could spread to the entire building. Chimney sweep brushes come in handy for all sorts of chimney cleaning jobs.
These are of varying sizes, shapes, and designs.
They’re made this way to provide comprehensive coverage of every space within the chimney structure. This promotes better cleaning of the structure.
What the Ideal Chimney Sweep Brushes Should Be
For manufacturers of chimney components and maintenance tools, a lot goes into product research and development. Brushes designed are made in such a way to cover all areas within the structure.
Your chimney sweep brushes should be such that they’re easy to maneuver around small openings where traditional brushes won’t reach or access.
This requires a great deal of flexibility in design quality.
Luckily, most chimney sweep brushes from reputable brands are known to be very flexible in terms of areas they cover and use efficiently.
Types of Chimney Sweep Brushes
There are different types of chimney sweep brushes. Each serves a specific purpose. You’ll have to find one that fits your particular needs.
Common types include pre-fab polypropylene brushes, round, oval, or square brushes, as well as the standard polypropylene brushes.
There are also flat wire brushes to choose from. As stated earlier, every brush type serves a specific function or fits a particular use. The type of brush you choose or select will be determined by the use it serves.
Let’s briefly discuss each of these chimney sweep brush types.
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Pre-Fab Polypropylene Brushes
This brush type is best suited for use in metal and prefabricated chimneys. Chimneys with a significant accumulation of creosote are best attended with polypropylene brushes.
What makes a poly chimney brush ideal for cleaning such chimneys is its flexibility.
Its flexibility allows for easy maneuverability.
You tend to get easier access to bends and other difficult-to-reach areas of your chimney. More often than not, the result you get is quite impressive.
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Round, Oval, or Rectangle Chimney Brushes
If you have a masonry chimney and wonder what type of chimney sweep brush to use, the answer is simple; round, oval, or rectangular brushes will serve. Can these brushes be used for prefab or metal chimneys? Not at all!
Using these for cleaning prefab or metal chimneys will only lead to damage.
With this said, you’ll need to know that round, oval, or rectangular brushes have two versions each. There are those designed for professional use as well as those intended for DIY chimney cleaning.
Each serves its purpose. As a DIY’er, you want to stick with the basic version meant for homeowners.
Apart from product labeling, one other way to distinguish between those for professional use and DIY use is in the bristle density. Chimney sweep brushes designed for professional use tend to have more bristle density.
While this is true, it’s also important to state that you’re not restricted from purchasing any you feel serves your needs. Chimney sweep brushes with denser bristles tend to make the job quicker and less difficult.
We’re not leaving out the shapes. Round, oval, or rectangular brushes are named after the shapes they come in. It’s common knowledge that chimneys come in different shapes.
So, certain brush shapes will correspond to particular chimneys.
All of these brushes can still be used for cleaning different parts of a single chimney.
It all depends on what your cleaning needs are. You might want to include these in your chimney cleaning kits for better cleaning results.
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Standard Polypropylene Brushes
Standard polypropylene brushes serve for cleaning prefab and metal chimneys.
However, they’re only effective for cleaning when there’s a limited amount of creosote buildup. In other words, creosote buildup shouldn’t be too much.
Standard polypropylene brushes are mostly ideal for light cleaning of metal and prefab chimneys. For heavy cleaning, you’ll need to go for something different.
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Flat Wire Brushes
One other chimney sweep brush type is the flat wire brush. Glazed or toughened creosotes are best cleaned using this brush type. Flat wire brushes come with toughened flat tines.
This helps provide the scraping action necessary to get your chimney back in good shape.
Do flat wire chimney sweep brushes serve for all chimney types?
Not at all! You’ll only need to use such for cleaning masonry chimneys. Using this cleaning tool on prefab or metal chimneys will result in damage.
Chimney Sweep Brush Kits
To further understand chimney sweep brushes, you’ll need to consider the different categories available. There are chimney brushes by size & shape, chimney brushes by material as well as chimney brush accessories.
In terms of materials, we’ve discussed the different chimney brush materials above.
Chimney sweep brushes designed for a particular use have to be a certain size to cover the areas they’re meant to cover during cleaning. A large chimney brush will clean larger units faster.
Chimney brush accessories mostly comprise rods onto which they’re attached to. Different rod sizes enable easy reach of different points of the chimney.
Based on our discussions, it’s clear that cleaning a chimney effectively is dependent on using the right tool. The different tools have been discussed in addition to the type of chimney they’re used on.