Chimney Sweeps are Cleaning up!

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One of the key elements of the August West System is a highly specialized high-volume vacuum cleaner called a "soot sweeper". Don't underestimate this piece of equipment. It is not merely a heavy-duty shop vac (which moves, maybe, 90 cubic feet of air a minute). This compact monster moves 700 cubic feet of air per minute ... which is about eight or ten times the capacity of your average house vacuum sweeper. But that's the kind of air-moving muscle you need if you really want to keep a cascade of soot out of your clients' homes and out of your lungs. Nothing less will do.

A second key part of the August West Chimney Sweeping System is a set of specially developed fiberglass cleaning rods. These rods snap together with "quick disconnects" similar to the connectors on air-powered tools. And they're constructed of a mixture of fibers and resins and held to a diameter which makes them just flexible enough to bend around smoke shelves . . . but still rigid enough to poke a brush all the way up a chimney. The construction of the rods, furthermore, has been shrewdly calculated to make them tough and highly resistant to fractures. In the unlikely event of a break, however, the formulation of the rods' resin/fiber mixture and cure was designed to make the snaptogether extensions splinter apart (like a green tree limb) rather than snap off clean (leaving a brush stuck in a flue somewhere). In short--just as with the August West soot sweeper--there's far more to the AW cleaning rods than meets the eye.

And there's far more to the August West profit picture than meets the eye too, thanks to the special gear just described. Because those rods and that soot sweeper make it possible, in most cases, for one man or woman (instead of two) to clean a flue or chimney entirely from the bottom (without ever getting up on the roof) ... and do the whole job in a fast half hour (instead of the hour or hour and a half required by more traditional methods).

Steve Curtis--the personable young fellow whom Weiland and Brock watched pocket $140 for four hours work one day last fall--uses the August West System ... which allows him to clean a "typical" fireplace somewhat differently than the Hendersonville sweeps (see above) go about the same job.

First Steve spreads a painter's dropcloth in front of the hearth, positions the end of his soot sweeper's inlet hose in the back of the fireplace, and turns the "dust sucker" on. He then reaches up into the fireplace's throat and removes the damper.

Next Curtis chooses the proper-sized brush, snaps it onto a Flexi-rod, and pushes the brush up into the flue. More rods are snapped onto the first one and fed up into the chimney until, finally, the brush pops out the top of the stack. Steve then scrubs the flue from the top down . . . while he remains conveniently and safely indoors at the base of the chimney.

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