Chimney sweeping and cleaning in St. Cloud.

1. What comes off the walls.

   Every wood fire coats the inside of the flue. New soot is dry and powdery and comes off with a brush; slow, smoky fires over the years bake it into tar and then a hard glaze that plain bristles barely mark.

   Work starts at the damper and climbs to the cap. The shelf is swept after that and the floor of the firebox last, so what came loose is carried out with us rather than left to burn.

2. Deciding when the next one is due.

   How you burn sets the pace. A flue fed nightly coats far faster than one lit on a few cold days; a thick or glossy layer says the sweep is late.

   Whatever the use, NFPA 211 suggests one inspection a year, which is how the coating gets noticed, so sweep and inspection often happen in one visit.

   Cold is a short season here. The Kissimmee station, about 9 miles west of downtown St. Cloud, averages 3.2 nights a year at or below freezing and 18.1 at or below 40 degrees (1991 to 2020 normals), so hearths see bursts of use. Even a seldom-lit flue gathers soot, and an idle one can fill with leaves and nests, which is why a yearly look is the sensible default.

3. What clean walls give you.

   A heavy deposit of creosote may ignite in the flue, and that is among the ways chimney fires begin. Without it, a stray spark finds little fuel.

   Draw improves too. Smoke should rise and leave; in a coated or half-blocked flue it may spill back into the room the instant the damper is opened.

   Fireplaces are old news in this city: the Hunter Arms Hotel, opened on New York Avenue in 1927, had a coquina rock fireplace among its interior features. A hearth that old or one built last year collects soot all the same.

4. Stoves, inserts and gas log sets.

   A stove turned down for the night smolders, and smoldering smoke makes the heaviest creosote; most of it settles in the connector pipe between stove and flue.

   We clean the full route of the smoke, beginning with the stovepipe and its joints and ending at the cap, with the flue or liner between. Gas appliances are another matter. Florida's Fuel Gas code has a rule for gas: a flue that once vented solid fuel is to be cleaned out before a gas appliance connects to it (501.15.2), and the passage is to be examined before any appliance is replaced (503.5.6). Under the residential code an unvented gas log heater cannot go into a factory-built fireplace unless that unit is tested and listed for it (R1004.4).

5. At the cap: soot, birds and bats.

   Soot builds up on the cap's mesh as smoke cools, and since that mesh also holds sparks in, a clogged one hurts the draw and works against itself; every visit includes clearing it. Birds and bats also move into flues across Florida. Chimney swifts have federal protection, and excluding bats is illegal from mid-April to mid-August, so an occupied flue is left alone until the season changes.

6. A smell when the air turns damp and warm.

   Creosote is the likely source. Used flues retain a little, and in heavy wet air, or when the draft runs backward, the smell sinks into the room. When the sweep has taken away the source, a damper kept closed between fires deals with what remains.

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