Just realized my 10th season is coming up next month

I was going through my work log last night and counted back - this February marks 10 years since I started sweeping chimneys in Portland. That's over 3,000 flues cleaned if my math is right. I remember my first job was a nasty creosote buildup on a 1920s house in the Irvington neighborhood. Has anyone else here hit a decade in the trade and felt like it flew by?

3 comments

3 Comments

lucasw8413d ago

Oh wow, congrats on the decade mark! That's a serious milestone. I gotta ask though - do you think the job has actually changed much in those 10 years? Like, with all the new wood stove tech and pellet stoves getting popular, I'm curious if the actual work is different or if the basics are still the same. Idk, maybe it's just me but it seems like the tools and techniques might have shifted a bit since you started.

abby_martinez12d ago

Right there with you, hitting a decade in chimney work totally snuck up on me too. I swear it feels like I was just climbing up on my first roof in the rain yesterday.

the_mia12d ago

and the tools have definitely improved, but the basics are still the same. The biggest change I've seen is in how we diagnose issues now - we used to just look at the smoke and guess, but now I use a small camera to see inside the flue before I even start scraping. It saves a lot of time on problem jobs. Also, pellet stoves are a whole different beast, they produce a fine ash that clumps up differently than regular wood smoke creosote, so I had to learn a new routine for those.

-1