Zach Brown, of Brown Homestead in Nobleboro, was having trouble booking a service to come clean out his chimney. They were either fully booked, too far away, or simply hadn’t responded, so Brown went out and purchased the equipment he needed to clean his own chimney. Then he cleaned his family members’ chimneys, and some of his friends’ chimneys.
This winter, he decided to clean them for other people too through his new business, T&T Chimney Cleaning. Named after his two children, Talia and Tyson, Brown started the business to fill a demand he saw rising in the area.
“Some people told me they hadn’t cleaned their chimney in 10 years,” Brown said, and people “certainly shouldn’t go more than two years.”
His sister had a chimney fire shortly after moving into her new house because she didn’t know when it had last been cleaned, and the buildup of soot and silt caught fire and blocked smoke from escaping the chimney.
“Chimney fires can be loud, scary, and dangerous,” and bring the rest of the house up in flames, Brown said.
If there’s no liner on the bricks in the chimney, “there’s not a lot to keep (smoke and fire) from getting into the walls,” Bremen Fire Chief Don Leeman said.
The department gets more calls for fires in the fall and summer because people are more likely to use wet wood instead of wood stored in dry conditions, Leeman said. With wet wood, there is more silt build up in chimneys that catches fire.
“Chimney cleaners also inspect the chimney for its condition,” Leeman added.
The T&T Chimney Cleaning services all of Lincoln County, and places just outside of the county line. For more information, call 701-1684.
