Spent 3 hours on a flue that just kept filling with debris

I had a job last week in a old house near downtown Portland where the flue liner was crumbling and every sweep just brought more chunks down. Took me three full hours to get it clean because I kept having to switch between rods and a vacuum attachment. Anyone else run into liners that seem to never stop shedding?

4 comments

4 Comments

abbyp6124d ago

Question whether it's really that bad. I mean, three hours sounds like overkill to me. Sometimes you just gotta accept that not every flue needs to be spotless to function. If the liner's crumbling, that's a replacement issue, not a cleaning marathon. Seems like you could have saved yourself a lot of time by calling it clean enough after the first big pass and moving on. Right?

emma_garcia24d ago

Three hours on one flue? That's insane lol. I had a rental property last year where the liner was basically turning into dust every time I even looked at it. It would just keep raining down chunks no matter how many passes I made with the brush. Ended up having to do about four separate vacuum sessions between rodding attempts just to keep from making a mess worse.

nathankim24d ago

lol I feel your pain man, I've had the exact same thing with those old clay liners that just keep chipping. What finally worked for me was hitting it with a shop vac first to get the loose stuff, then using a stiff poly brush on the rods instead of steel. The steel bristles just make more chunks fall down. If you're still dealing with it, try running a camera up there first to see where the crumble zone actually is so you're not wasting time scrubbing sections that are fine.

the_alice17d ago

Nope, that clay liner situation is rough and three hours sounds about right when it keeps crumbling... @nathankim had the right idea with the shop vac and poly brush combo, I've found that switching to a silicone brush helps too since it doesn't scrape the sides as hard. Calling it clean enough after one pass just kicks the problem down the road when those loose chunks eventually fall and block the damper.

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