How we clean a big stone fireplace without soot in the living room: a Q&A with our chimney crew

A lot of the fireplaces we clean in the Hill Country are not small brick boxes. They are wide stone fireboxes under a log or cedar mantel, sometimes in a room full of mounted trophies, with a rug a few feet from the hearth. People are less worried about the chimney than about the room. So we sat down with our chimney crew and asked them to walk through a fireplace cleaning the way they actually do it.

What happens before anyone touches the ash?

We protect the room first. Drop cloths go down from the hearth to past where we will kneel and set tools, and anything delicate near the opening gets moved or covered. Then we look before we clean: is the damper open or closed, is there a glass door, is there a gas line or a log lighter in the firebox, is the ash still warm. If there was a fire in the last day, we come back later. Warm ash is the one thing we will not vacuum.

How do you keep the soot from going everywhere?

Two things: we work from the inside out, and we keep the vacuum running the whole time. Big chunks of charred wood and ash come out by hand into a bag. The fine stuff, which is what actually ends up on furniture, goes straight into a HEPA vacuum from the floor of the firebox, the back wall and the corners. Brushing the smoke shelf and damper area happens with the vacuum nozzle right there, so the dust has somewhere to go besides the room.

What gets cleaned, exactly?

• The firebox floor, walls and back, down to bare masonry.
• The grate and andirons, pulled out and cleaned.
• The damper plate and frame, brushed and checked that it opens fully and holds.
• The smoke shelf behind the damper, where debris and nests collect.
• The smoke chamber and flue, swept from below, then checked from the roof when the job includes a sweep.

What are you looking for once it's clean?

This is the real reason to clean. Under the ash you can see cracked firebrick, open mortar joints at the back wall, rust on the damper, and white staining that means water is getting in from the top. In big stone fireplaces we also look at the lintel and the joint between the stone face and the firebox, because those move over the years. Every one of those gets photographed and shown to you, with a price per line if anything needs work.

How long does it take?

A firebox clean on its own is usually under an hour. Add a full sweep with the camera and the roof, and plan on a couple of hours. Big, deep fireboxes with a season of ash take longer, mostly because we take the ash out by hand instead of rushing it into the vacuum.

Anything the homeowner should do before we come?

• Don't burn the night before, so the ash is cold.
• Clear the mantel and the space in front of the hearth.
• Tell us about anything odd: smoke in the room, a smell after rain, a damper that sticks. That tells us where to look first.

Book it

The inspection that comes first is free and comes with the photos. We clean and sweep fireplaces in Marble Falls, Horseshoe Bay, Burnet, Llano, Kingsland, Georgetown, Leander and across the Hill Country, and the price is in writing before we start.