Shaking a chimney sweep’s hand gives you good luck, according to folklore. Spot a chimney sweep outside your window on New Year’s morning, and you’ll have a lucky year. But if you see a chimney sweep and a white horse on the same day, you’ve hit the jackpot of luck.
“There’s a reason for these stories,” says Jim Collins, 49, co-owner of Naperville Chimney Sweeps Inc. “In 19th Century Europe, when a fire could burn down a whole neighborhood, the chimney sweep did bring you luck–he cleaned your chimney so your house wouldn’t burn down.”
Today, chimney sweeps are employed by the government in Europe. “There, you have to have your chimney swept by law,” says Collins. “It’s not the law here, but it’s an important thing to do to avoid chimney fires.”
Collins, his partner, Michael Crowell, and their seven employees all sweep chimneys part-time, in addition to being full-time firefighters from Naperville, DeKalb and Park Forest companies.
“It was a natural progression, from firefighting to sweeping chimneys,” says Collins, who founded the company in 1989 with Crowell. “Most people in their right mind wouldn’t climb ladders and get on roofs, but we do it all the time.”
Each 45-minute service call includes a chimney inspection and cleaning, plus a mini fire safety lesson.
“After we clean the chimney and check for damage and missing flue caps, we check the homeowner’s safety devices–fire alarms, carbon monoxide detectors, fire extinguishers–and review the family’s fire escape plan,” says Collins. “We’re firefighters first, chimney sweeps second.”
Each year, Collins and his crew clean and do minor repairs on 1,000-plus chimneys, and schedule 100 major chimney repairs. The brick-and-mortar jobs go to the two DeKalb firefighters, both experienced masons.
Collins and his colleagues work in pairs for safety’s sake. “If one of us fell off a roof, we’d want a partner there,” he says. “Being firemen, we’re overly cautious.”
They service an area including Naperville, Lisle and portions of Aurora and Wheaton. “Beyond that, we refer calls to other sweeps,” he says. Business heats up before Thanksgiving and Christmas, when clients look forward to cozy gatherings in front of the fireplace.
Save for emergencies, the crew doesn’t work on holidays or during the last week of December. “We’re all fathers, so that’s family time for us,” says Collins.
One of the men’s wives, Marge Adair of Naperville, dispatches the sweeps from a home office. The sweeps’ offices are their trucks, equipped with chimney replacement parts, tarps, vacuums, brushes and ladders. Collins’ pickup truck carries four ladders, ranging from 12 feet to 40 feet.
By the time Collins reaches a client’s home, Adair has told him when the chimney was last cleaned, how often it’s used and the age of the house. This helps Collins determine the amount of creosote (soot residue) he’ll find lining the chimney. “Less than 1/8-inch creosote is usually OK,” he says. “More than that, you have a greater chance of a chimney fire, so it should be cleaned.” When Collins’ inspection shows chimney cleaning isn’t necessary, he doesn’t charge for the service call.
A family who uses their fireplace two to three times a week usually needs their chimney cleaned once a year, he says. “Another general rule is after you use one cord of wood,” says Collins. “Sometimes someone will say, `My grandfather had a chimney for 50 years and never cleaned it and never had a fire.’ I tell them it’s like smoking. There’s always someone out there who smokes everyday and lives to 100. But for every person like that, there are another 75 people who won’t. You may never have a chimney fire, but why increase your chances?”
Cheap insurance
His $75 charge is cheap insurance, Collins tells clients. “Chimney fires are rare–about 10 a year in Naperville, for example–but expensive. It costs $3,000 to $4,000 to reline a burnt flue,” he says.
Before cleaning a chimney, Collins covers the area in front of the fireplace with tarps. He dons a respirator that filters dust from the air he breathes. After removing the damper door, he vacuums the dust that falls into the fireplace. Then he feeds a brush up into the chimney, adding extension poles until it reaches the top. After the brush pulls the dirt down, he wipes down the firebox, vacuums and replaces the door.
“Usually, we take the creosote with us,” he says. “But a lot of people want it for their gardens.”
Cleaning the chimney from the fireplace is a Midwestern tradition, says Collins. “On the East Coast, they clean from the top for two reasons–tradition and because houses are usually older, so the broken masonry could fall on you while you’re working,” he says.
Chimney sweeping tools have changed little since the 19th Century, says Collins. “The poles are fiberglass now instead of bamboo,” he says. “Some of our new brushes are plastic now. But most are still steel.”
But the rules change often. To keep abreast of new fire-safety and building codes, Collins spends 40 hours a year in continuing education courses sponsored by the National Chimney Sweep Guild, which designated him a certified chimney sweep.
Collins says he welcomes questions from preschoolers who watch him work. “At first, they’re afraid of us because we wear all black to hide the dirt,” he says. “But when they find out we’re firefighters, they think we’re the good guys.”
For practical reasons, Collins wears black jeans and shirt, although some sweeps wear a traditional top hat.
Top hat and tails
“The hat and tails come from the English, where legend says sweeps were so poor, they wore hand-me-downs from undertakers,” Collins explains. He keeps a top hat in his truck for children to wear while he works.
“Sometimes, when kids are watching, we’ll pull out a bit of red felt from the chimney and say, `Looks like Santa Claus left this,”‘ he says. “One of the guys has a Santa Claus hat that he pulls out of the chimney when kids are watching.”
Finding critters in chimneys is routine, says Collins. “Raccoons, ducks, squirrels, lots of birds. Usually, we can chase them out,” he explains. “If they need to be trapped, we call a licensed trapper.”
A native of Downers Grove, Collins didn’t grow up with a burning desire to become a firefighter or chimney sweep. He learned firefighting in the Air Force and collected an associate degree in fire science from the College of DuPage. Since he joined the Naperville Fire Department 22 years ago, he has climbed the ladder to the rank of lieutenant.
Collins and his wife, Polly, the secretary to a middle school principal, and their three daughters once were avid campers, pitching tents in 48 states. “Now the girls are grown up and we’re just making the transition to the empty nest,” he says.
“We were always a close family,” says Collins. But his oldest daughter’s life-threatening illness a few years ago left them even more appreciative of their good fortune. “Now, everything’s precious,” he says.
Juggling a dual career is rewarding, says Collins. But his definition of success is more down-to-earth: “A long marriage, healthy family and being able to order a pizza on a Friday night.”
For more information, call Naperville Chimney Sweeps Inc., 630-357-1696.
