I stopped brushing flues top-down after 12 years and my creosote numbers dropped

Ruby Lane · 2026-10-13T15:05:05.752385+00:00

Everyone in my local group swears by brushing from the roof first and working down, and I did it that way for over a decade. In March I started doing the bottom-up pass first on a test run of 30 jobs around Akron, just to see if it mattered, and the difference caught me off guard. On a typical 8x8 clay liner I was pulling maybe two thirds of a gallon of soot with the old method before the sweep got clean. Doing the bottom first and finishing top-down got me to under half a gallon on the same style flues, and the dust in the living room dropped enough that two customers asked what I changed. My guess is the bottom pass knocks the heavy shelf loose while the top brush still has room to push, instead of packing it down the whole run. I know this goes against what most of us were taught, so I want to hear it. Has anyone else flipped their order and seen the same thing, or am I just getting lucky on soft creosote?

Topic Shares

Loading…

I stopped brushing flues top-down after 12 years and my creosote numbers dropped | Chimney Sweeps - Topic Shares