Chimney Sweeps

[NiceCupOfTea]

We have an unused chimney that goes down to 2 fireplaces in rooms that back on to each other. One is just a bare hole with newspaper stuffed up it to close the hole, the other has been boarded over and a radiator fitted in front of it.

A couple of months ago I heard some disturbance in the wall like a bird or small animal thrashing around in the chimney. Stopped after a while, but heard it again a couple of days later. Nothing since so assumed it had died or found its way out.

Fast forward to yesterday. Got back from work to find 4 or 5 large similar looking flies buzzing around. Dispatched them, took the rubbish out, and decided to investigate further. LOTS of flies in front room (with the open fireplace). Must have killed 20-30

Pretty sure they must be coming from the fireplace - I guess whatever it was died . There's no real smell (it might be a tad musty but the room doesn't get much use). I taped it up with masking tape and cardboard overnight and there is definite activity behind it this morning

So, I think a chimney sweep is in order. A few local ones (found via NACS website) seem to do removal of vermin and also guards on top of the chimney to stop it happening again.

Questions:

1. What sort of price should I be expecting for this work?
2. They say that sweeping chimneys is a fairly clean process these days - really?
3. Any idea how long this sort of work will take? Half an hour? Half a day? Reason being I'm not around much at the moment...
4. I am assuming the chimney splits for the 2 fireplaces just above them - if the creature fell into the other fireplace behind the radiator, is this going to have to be ripped out to deal, or is there anything that can be sprayed up the chimney to "neutralise" in some way? Could just leave it all taped up and wait a couple of months I suppose...

Cheers all...

[GreenDog]

Same thing happened to me when I first moved into Casa Greendog.
The flies all died within a couple of days, helped along by a few squirts of fly-spray. The desicated corpse of a crow was recovered from behind the gas fire a couple of years later when it was being serviced. It's not happened again since so i don't fret about it, it's only a few blue bottles after all.

[RedWhiteMonkey]

I was surprised how cheap, quick and clean it was when I had to get the chimney in my front room cleaned. It cost £20, took about half any hour and there was only a small amount of dust/soot to hoover up at the end (most goes into their vacuum thing). You'll probably find the price is probably location dependent, London will be more expensive than Leeds, etc.

[Simpo Two]

Not sure why you'd need a chimney sweep to remove a dead bird. I pull the newspaper out and let it fly to safety before it dies.

You just need a wire chimney guard stuck on top of the chimney; we had some s round selling them a few years back.

[NiceCupOfTea]

Simpo Two said:

Not sure why you'd need a chimney sweep to remove a dead bird. I pull the newspaper out and let it fly to safety before it dies.

You just need a wire chimney guard stuck on top of the chimney; we had some s round selling them a few years back.

At the time the room was like a bombsite, you could barely navigate your way around it. I didn't fancy a half dead pigeon or magie (or squirrel) teararsing around the room stting everywhere!

[renmure]

NiceCupOfTea said:

Any idea how long this sort of work will take? Half an hour? Half a day? Reason being I'm not around much at the moment...

Actually sweeping the chimney will be about 30 mins. It is fairly low-tec. Usually they tape a big dust sheet (with a small hole for the rod to go through) over the fireplace area and then feed the brush up the chimney dislodging anything in the way. Once all the dusty cak has been dislodged, and allowing a few mins for it all to settle, they untape the dust sheet and either vacuum or just shovel the dust into a bucket for removal. It isn't particularly messy and once you have seen it done once you will do your own and never get anyone else in to do it again.

[Gareth79]

Definitely get unused chimneys capped too, my house has six chimneys over two stacks and last week I decided to remove a steel plate which was across the top of the kitchen fireplace to clean it out and re-seal it so I could mount some lights in there. THREE buckets of soot/cement/bird poo (and several vacuum cleaner bags) later I was done! No dead animals thankfully, I did it gingerly because I knew if a corpse fell out I would scream and drop the bucket!

[Simpo Two]

NiceCupOfTea said:

At the time the room was like a bombsite

Talking of bombsites, my father witnessed the fact that a V2 rocket is quite good at cleaning chimneys too! The resulting shower of soot quite spoiled his new jacket