A buildup of soot inside your fireplace chimney is something that needs your attention to avoid a host of problems. These include inefficient heating, polluting fumes wafting into your home, and the risk of a house fire. Therefore, it makes eminent sense for you to remove the soot in a timely and regular fashion.
The best way to do that would be to requisition the services of a professional chimney soot cleaner like Sootmaster. They possess the technical skills and experience to carry out a thorough cleaning job. However, you can carry out the cleaning yourself if you wish, but you have to ensure that you do a good job of it, or you may end up with a less than satisfactory job.
Creating Your Own Chimney Soot Cleaner
It is not impossible to remove soot deposits from your chimney yourself, but you have to be able to do it the right way. Here’s how you can create your own chimney soot cleaner. In fact, there are several ways you can do that. A couple of examples are given below.
Cleaning Solution With Vinegar, Ammonia Solution, and Baking Soda
You have got to mix the three in the following proportions: half a cup of vinegar, a cup of ammonia solution, and one-fourth of a cup of baking soda. Next, you need to mix the solution in about a gallon of water.
The resultant solution can be applied to the bricks lining the chimney, using a sponge attached to the long handle of a stick. After you have applied the solution, give it a little time to seep into the bricks. Follow this up by wiping off the solution with the help of a clean sponge. It may be a good idea to spread out an old blanket at the bottom of the fireplace to prevent any drip offs from the cleaning to soil the house.
You must ensure your personal safety by wearing rubber gloves to prevent the cleaning solution from coming in touch with your skin. It would also be a good idea to use a secure good quality ladder to reach the top of the chimney on the roof.
Using Ammonia Solution, Detergent and Powdered Pumice
A cup of your regular detergent powder with which you do your laundry needs to be mixed with four cups of hot water. Add half a cup of ammonia solution and about half a pound of powdered pumice and you have your very own chimney soot cleaner ready for use.
You can now apply this chimney soot cleaner to the dirty surface of the chimney with the help of a brush with hard bristles. Make sure to give the bricks a thorough scrub with the solution and you can end the job with a nice rinse that makes the chimney clean and soot free.
Cleaning Can Be Messy!
As you can see, there are ways of making your own chimney soot cleaner and performing a fairly good job with the cleaning too. That being stated, not everyone is up to the task of carrying out a fireplace chimney cleaning job on their own. For one they may just not have the time to do it.
Secondly, a clean up of any sort is a messy job, which is something that might not agree with some people. Then there is the whole question of climbing up to the roof to access the top of the chimney. Some people don’t have the head for heights.
Also, there is the thing about the fact that if you are not confident about doing a great job of cleaning on your own, you may be endangering your property and indeed the life of your family members. Blocked chimneys are known to cause devastating house fires that sometimes turn out to be fatal. Besides, these can lead to the leaking of noxious gasses into the house which is bad for the health of its occupants. The efficiency of the fireplace is influenced as the fires don’t burn well adding to the cost of heating.
So if one wants to carry out a cleaning job on one’s own just to save the money paid like the professional charges to a chimney sweeping outfit, it might actually turn out to be a far more expensive affair than one had bargained for over the long term. Should you want to learn more about the best ways to remove soot from a chimney, make an appointment by clicking the button down below.