Ruff for cleaning chimney pipes

08-07-2018
Instruments

The normal operation of the fireplace or stove is directly dependent on good traction in the chimney. No matter how properly the chimney is folded, in any case, sooner or later the question arises of cleaning it. This work can be done in different ways, but experts agree that the most effective is mechanical cleaning, and the main tool here is a special ruff for cleaning pipes.

Photo chimney sweep with brush.

Why clean the pipe

The chimney and all that applies to it, are considered structures of increased danger. Experts recommend doing an inspection at least 2 times a year in the offseason. Preventive cleaning should be carried out at least once a year.

All these requirements and precautions are related to the fact that the overgrowing of the chimney can lead to disastrous consequences.

  • The most innocent thing that can happen is if your stove or fireplace starts to burn badly.. Everything can be much sadder if the layering of soot under the influence of high temperatures will begin to ignite. Breaking away from the inner surface, burning soot can cause a fire in the house or buildings around it.
  • But even if the soot does not ignite, clogging the chimney can lead to reverse thrust.. Then carbon monoxide will flow into the room. By itself, carbon monoxide has no color, no smell, so it is impossible to immediately notice its presence. The fireplace or stove is often heated in the evening, and if at night the carbon monoxide goes into the room, the poisoning can be fatal. Such cases have been known for a long time.
Plastic ruff.

Important: mechanical cleaning with a brush and auxiliary objects is used in cases where a layer of soot on the walls of the chimney pipe becomes thicker than 2 mm. If the layers are small, then you can do with folk methods or dry cleaning.

Overgrown chimney.

Mechanical chimney cleaning

Long gone are the days when every house had a stove. Such a common profession in the past chimney sweep is slowly losing its relevance. This leads to the fact that the price of such services increases many times and more often the owners think about cleaning the chimney with their own hands. Occupation is not so difficult as responsible.

Mechanical cleaning do it yourself.

Work specialized tool

Before starting work, you must tightly close all the hatches and openings in the furnace, through which soot can fly into the room. In a conventional, wood-burning stove for these purposes there are flaps. As for the fireplace, here you need to curtain the firebox with a damp cloth, it is better to additionally fix this cloth around the perimeter of the firebox with adhesive tape.

Tip: seasoned chimney sweeps advise all such work to be done in early autumn, in warm and calm weather. The timing of the year is not critical, as long as there is no wind. Your neighbors, and you yourself, most likely will not like the courtyard covered with soot.

The main tool for a chimney sweep is a metal pipe brush. The size of the bristles on this device should be about 1.2 times the diameter of the pipe. Most often, the brush is made of elastic steel wire, but recently there have been many polymeric materials capable of successfully replacing metal.

Steel brush.

For square or rectangular chimneys a pipe brush is often used, rigidly mounted on a wooden or plastic holder. As a rule, such holders can be extended by winding additional segments on them.

Tip: for cleaning heavily clogged square or rectangular chimney, use special scrapers or blades. Since in these cases the ruff can not cope, but in any case, after working with a scraper, it should be cleaned with a brush.

The most common tool is a pipe cleaner, suspended on a steel cable. In order to work it was more convenient for them, and the tool freely entered the pipe, the steel core on the carbine is suspended from below.

Brush rigidly fixed on a metal cable.

The core should be round; it is classically considered that the diameter of this device should be around two-thirds relative to the pipe section. Consider that the effectiveness of round weighting is tested over the years, this form was not chosen randomly. It is not recommended to use non-centered objects of irregular shape, such as a sports dumbbell, instead, as they can be stuck in the channel.

The same core is used in the case when the chimney is clogged with an extraneous, voluminous object, most often it is a brick or bird nests that have fallen out of the masonry. In such a case, the pipe cleaner is detached, the core is suspended from the cable and dropped into the channel. The calculation is done on knocking the mash into the furnace.

The cleaning instructions themselves are simple and intuitive to understand. Ruff metal for cleaning pipes with a suspended core is lowered into the pipe and under the weight of the core, the channel is cleared by reciprocating movements. At the end of the work, through the technological valves, loose carbon black is removed from the pipe.

Ruff with centering weighting.

Doing the brush yourself

A professional-made tool is not always close at hand, but you shouldn’t get upset; you can do it yourself with a ruff for pipe cleaning. It may not be as good as the factory, but small constructions with such a tool can be cleaned.

If in the pantry or in the country there is a thick steel cable, then by cutting off a piece of it, you can make an improvised metal ruff for cleaning pipes. The work is not difficult, but dangerous, on an elastic steel wire is easy to get hurt.

The cut-off piece of the torso is initially, in the middle it is clamped with a clamp, on which there must be a ring for hooking the cable and the core. Further, on both sides, the cable is expanded and fluffed.

Brushes on a hard holder.

When there is no steel cable on hand, you can use ordinary plastic bottles, now they are everywhere. If there is no core, then as a weighting, you can use a metal pipe filled with sand, on which the brush will be based.

In several bottles, the bottom is cut off, and the walls are cut into longitudinal ribbons and these tapes are bent to the sides. The whole structure consists of 2 sections directed towards each other. Sections are assembled from 2 to 3 cut bottles so that there are as many petals as possible.

If the weighting is a pipe, then the sections are attached to it with adhesive tape. In the case when there is a core, the sections are put on the cable through the neck of the bottles and fixed in knots.

Scraper cleaning.

The video in this article shows the options for cleaning pipes.

Conclusion

Although of course the pipe-cleaning ruff as a construction is not complicated and it can be done with your own hands, but if for some reason your chimney requires frequent mechanical cleaning, it is better to buy a professional tool.

Factory, professional tool.