Does your open fire have a weak draw of air whilst burning? Even after its just been swept? Do you you find that the air in your room is smokey when the fire is on? Do you find you only have these symptoms on odd occasions such as windy days? Chances are you need an Anti-downdraft cowl. There are many available for purchase so check with your chimney sweep before buying one.
Please note that anti-downdraft cowls are not designed to stop drafts coming down the chimney when the fire is not in use.
If you can wait until Summer then we can offer you a discount as this is traditionally our quiet period. This year however, we are already fully booked until the end of July and can only fit in 4 more full installs before the busy season starts again in September.
Thus if you are a bargain hunter, now is the time to book in your survey. Give us a call, or drop us an email on office@chimneysweep.info to arrange.
Unfortunately we have decided that we are no longer able to accept credit cards nor debit cards. This is because of the new legislation that stops us from adding the cost of the bank charges for processing the transaction to the bill. This on average is around £60 per customer, and would mean increasing all our prices at the quotation stage, for all our customers, regardless of how they are planning to pay, and also purchasing a hand held device that costs around £300.
In the last year only 2 customers have asked to pay by credit card and so for the time being, we would rather keep costs low and so ask that our customers pay by cash, cheque, bank transfer or PayM.
Our sister company Cleansweep Vac Services has been in the business for over 25 years and can bring a wealth of experience and expertise to your chimney and fireplace. They will provide you with a certificate for your insurance company to say that the chimney has been swept to industry standards and for small fee can provide a HETAS certificate for you as they are now HETAS approved.
You can book a chimney sweep online at http://www.chimneysweep.info/book-chimney-sweep or over the phone on 01462 671555. Please note that you have to book in the sweep as a HETAS sweep as HETAS certificates cannot be supplied retrospectively.
Use the coupon code WEB5 to save yourself £5. (online only) There are also discounts for multiple sweeps in one location (house or street)
Sweeping, Chimney Maintenance and repair, servicing of woodburners, fireplace installation and cowling fitting in the Hitchin area and surrounding villages. Take a look at the areas covered.
A chimney sweep can take anywhere from 20 mins (well looked after burners, burning at the correct temperature and burning good quality fuel) to 60 mins (large open fires burning high volumes of fuel). If you have a birds nest it could literally take hours to clear, so fitting a bird guard could be wise if you notice flocks settling on your roof.
Flexible times to suit you. Appointments available from 7:30am to 6:30pm during the week and between 10am and 4pm at the weekend.
Choosing a wood burning or multifuel stove can be mind blowing. There are literally thousands to choose from!
Maybe you have a really cold room and like to be hot and are thinking of buying a stove that is hotter than recommended for your room size. Maybe you are wanting a stove larger in size to fit a large fireplace and have not considered the increase in kilowatt output. If so, there are a couple of important things to think about.
One, you are obviously going to be really hot and will need a lot of fuel to burn. A high kilowatt stove doesn’t magically turn the fuel into higher heat, they burn more fuel to create the heat!
Two, if you are too hot and because of this burn small fires to keep the heat down, or use with the air flow turned very low, you will be burning the fuel inefficiently which will produce more soot and let more pollutants into the atmosphere. A fire burning inefficiently produces a lot of soot that will coat the inside of your liner and run the risk of a fire in the liner, which could spread to the house. Also any soot left sitting in the liner over time, will corrode the liner which will mean it will not last the recommended time suggested by your installer or the manufacturer of the liner. Thus needing replacing more often than the usual 10 years.
A high kilowatt output stove should be installed in a large room, or a open plan room, or a large draughty room. Any stove over 5kw will also need a permanently open air vent to feed air to the stove in order to work properly and safely. A stove pipe thermometer would also be a must, so that you can see when your stove is operating at an optimum temperature and not getting too hot or cold. Bearing in mind that around 38% of air pollution comes from open fires and old woodburners and / or people burning unseasoned wood or house coal, it makes sense not to add to those figures by making sure your installation is the cleanest it can be.
Always check with your installer or use an online calculator to work out the ideal size output for your room. Take a look at some high kilowatt stoves on woodburnerwarehouse.co.uk
If you are planning on getting a woodburner installed then one thing you will need is heat resistant gloves. It can be tempting to not use gloves occasionally and this almost always ends up in painful burns, if you are burning your stove at the correct temperature. I have tried out a few kinds and can recommend the following;
Stovax Leather Heat Resistant gloves – purchase here – these cover your whole arm and are very thick. Very hard wearing and long lasting. Only downside is can be cumbersome due to thickness.
Arada Hot Gloves – purchase here – Feel like woolly gloves but are incredibly heat resistant. Thin and not restrictive, but do not protect whole arm from heat nor dirt.
It really depends on what you will be burning and what kind of appliance you have, as to when it will next need sweeping.
For Open fires without a chimney liner burning;
Smokeless fuel or seasoned wood; sweep once every year
Bitumous coal; sweep every 3 months when in daily use.
For Oil or Gas fires; sweep once every year
For Multifuel stoves, Log burners or open fires, with a liner or twin wall pipe, burning;
Smokeless fuel; sweep once every year when you stop using your fire for the Summer. Avoid if not in Smoke controlled area. This will help prolong the life of the stainless steel in the liner or twin walled pipe.
Seasoned wood only; sweep when you stop using your fire for the Summer and then after three months when you start using it every day. For example; June and January and April. (Less in a warm year)
Bitumous Coal;sweep when you stop using your fire for the Summer and then half way through the burning season. Usually; June and January.
Please note that these guidelines assume that you are using your fire or multifuel stove every day throughout the colder months.
Inside your stove are thin bricks made of a dense insulator that expands and cools as part of the normal process of using your woodburner or multifuel stove. It is perfectly normal for these bricks to crack over time, and it is safe to continue using the stove.
Do not remove the cracked bricks however as this will make your stove work less efficiently. If the bricks are unable to stay in the stove because of the crack of have crumbed away dramatically, contact us online or give us a call on 014462 671555 and we will organise replacement bricks.
These bricks are not covered by the warranty if they crack within the first year, as your warranty covers the stove body. The main body being defined as the steel outer casing and items fixed immovably to the casing.
Air vents being open is absolutely fine and is also better for your liner as it avoids burning fuel at low temperatures and thus creates less soot. Stoves suitable for smoke exempt areas have air vents that are permanently open for precisely this reason.
Vents that are fully open all the time will mean the fire is roaring constantly however, so a good idea to get a stove thermometer to ensure that you are not burning your stove too hot. You don’t have to spend a lot for one of these and they really do help.
A simple straightforward sweep of a regular sized chimney takes around half an hour. Sometimes however customers have birds nests blocking their chimneys. These are not the small circular birds nests that you see in trees in your garden and on Easter cakes. The birds create these nests by filling the chimney stack (6 metres or so) with twigs, moss and other debris to cement it together. Once the chimney is full enough to their liking they then build a smaller nest within the twigs in which they lay eggs. It can take up to 90 minutes to clear the chimney and make it safe to use, and for this we charge a little extra. We will however leave you the twigs that are removed as they often make excellent kindling for your fire.
To avoid this problem have a bird guard fitted or netting fixed to the top of the chimney pots. More about bird guards …..
Answers to your woodburner and chimney sweeping enquires. Contact us if you have a different question.
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