Today was a Dick Van Dyke kind of day, but without the singing, happiness or nice pay check.

Yes, today was the annual chimney cleaning chore which is not as fun as Dick makes out as seen in this clip from Mary Poppins.

The process goes something like this. I disconnect one portion of my chimney pipe and move it downwards. I then (somehow) move the wood stove out of the way of the rest of the chimney pipe and begin. My wire brush is connected to steel rods, with each rod (I have 3) being over 2 metres in length. I should also mention that the rods must pass through a small hole in a plastic bag, which is taped around the opening of the bottom of the chimney pipe. The plastic bag collects the soot; well, most of it, anyway. I continue to feed the rods upward and scrubbing the pipe until I have cleaned 3 floors of pipe. Slowly I pull out the rods and remove them, as I continue to clean the pipe coming downward. Once all the rods and brush have been removed, the plastic bag is carefully removed, the wood stove is moved into place, and the chimney pipe is once again connected. Finally the area is wiped down with a wet rag, as invariably some of the soot has seeped out through the pipe or my plastic bag. It takes less than an hour.

This year was a good year for burning meaning that we used mostly really good dry wood and we burned the fire at a high temperature. This led to little soot in the chimney pipe - we had less that 250 ml (or so) for 3 stories of pipe. I don’t know if this is good or bad compared to others, but we usually get a bit more soot than that so I’m happy we have less this year.

Now the wood stove is truly on holiday for the summer and won’t be called back into service until some time in the fall. Until that time, it bids us adieu!