A while back my buddy Bill stopped by, asked if he could borrow a step-ladder. He's borrowed stuff before, no problem there at all. While we were talking, Bill said that he wanted to clean the chimney at his house.

He heats his house with a wood stove, said he could see daylight, looking up through the flu.

Bill is 78 years old, gets around pretty good for his age, but what he was planning on doing, was taking a step-ladder up on the roof, a metal roof. So he could reach the top of the chimney.

I told Bill that I had a man that would do the job cheap.

Long story short: I got in touch with one of my guys at the local fire department, asked him to clean Bill's chimney. I told Bill to give them a nice donation, they'd get it done, no questions asked.

When I got in touch with my buddy Tyler, he said he'd put Bill on the list. About a week later, the fire department guys cleaned his chimney. From what Bill told me, they must have brushed out 2 or 3 gallons of soot from the chimney.

All together, Bill said the guys were there, loaded up and gone in about 35 minutes. That's pretty good.

Thinking to myself, the men at the fire department, would rather be on his roof, on a somewhat nice fall day, with a dry roof, and in the daylight. Compared to being called out, on the coldest night of January, during a bad storm.

We live in a small town, our firemen are volunteers, and honestly, they deserve more credit than they receive. I know we have volunteer firemen here on the forum, speaking for myself: Thanks for what you do. And I hope your pager never goes off again.

I used to climb on the roof to clean my own chimney. I can't do it anymore. My son does it now.

My son is a volunteer fireman. It's almost a second job if you consider the training sessions and the calls at all hours.

My chimneys get cleaned from below. For one I am on the ground. For the second I am 6 feet up on a step ladder pushing up. Messy job for sure.

Well, that's good, I'm sure he does have a lot of time invested.

I'll tell you for a small town, you'd be surprised how many times per year these guys are called out.

Years ago, (I guess back before they made these fancy round and square flu brushes) my uncles would tie a rope to a set of tire chains, and scrub up and down through the chimneys at Mom's home.

I'm sure that would be a mess scrubbing from the bottom end.

Back when I was young, bold, and daring, (read stupid) I always got the largest Christmas tree I could find. Wrapped up tight, I managed to get it into the house. When it was time to undecorate, the tree was too crispy to get it out through the door. So, after getting a good fire going in the natural fireplace, I'd clip a bough or three and put them on the fire. That fire whoofed so hard the air in the room shuddered! Pretty much drove my bride out of the room too. But I'll tell you, I had the cleanest flue in town! Them 12" clay flue tiles looked brand new. But now that I've got land in the north woods, the trees I bring back are not big, and I can run them out the door, where the city picks them up. Things have changed, and probably for the better!

When we had natural trees for Xmas, we had a tradition of torching the old one outside. It is scary how quickly and intensely they burn. This is one of the reasons why we are an artificial tree home now.

Dry pine trees do burn hot and fast. You guys remember those old time Christmas tree light bulbs? I'm not sure how many watts they were? But as big as a goose egg. I remember you could walk past the tree and feel the heat coming off of those bulbs.

I think all of our bulbs have burnt out or have been dropped and busted, which is a good thing.

Hal brings up a good point: Knowing what you can, and can't do. And what you could probably do, but probably shouldn't try. A friend told me years ago: I'm too old to get hurt. I understand exactly he meant.

Not so many years ago, my brother and I painted the roof at Mom's house. Keep in mind, my brother and I have been doing stupid stuff for over 120 years combined. It was hot, plus the fumes from the paint, out in direct sunshine. You can walk on the front and back porch roofs, no big deal. We painted the top part of the roof from a ladder, brushed it on, and brushed it on thick.

We got it done, no problems. We talked about it after we came off of the roof, and were cleaning up. We pretty much decided, next time it needs painted, we'll hire someone to do the job. But, that's the thing about it, if we hire someone to paint, it might look good from the ground, but up close, it might not look so good. Either way, one of us will be on the roof again.

My did used to perform the same trick by encasing a couple of bricks in chicken wire and dragging that up and down the chimney like a scrubber.

The good thing about the brushes is that they fit the chimney tightly. Push up, pull down and your chimney is clean.

I bought a brush set to use on my flue pipe for the little wood burner in the cabin. I remove the UL listed top of the flue and use a cordless drill, adding a length of flexible handle as needed to scourer out the pipe. Yea, gotta get up on the roof to do the job, but fortunately, I still can.