Loading…
7
Rod vs. whip on a 40 foot clay flue, which one am I wrong about?
Did a job in Salem last Tuesday on a 40 foot exterior clay flue and used a whip head on the drill for the first time instead of my usual rods and brush, and honestly the creosote came off way faster but I know some of the old guys would say I'm risking cracking the tile. A buddy of mine who has been doing this 25 years told me whips are for lazy guys and rods are the only real way, but I got the whole thing done in 35 minutes instead of an hour and the homeowner was happy. So which camp are you in, whip for speed or rods for safety, and has anyone actually cracked a tile with a whip or is that just a story guys pass around?
1 comments
Log in to join the discussion
Log In1 Comment
jesse_nguyen15d ago
How many times have you heard about a tile actually cracking from a whip though? I run a whip on every flue I can reach with it and have for about six years now. Put it this way, if the tile is so thin that a nylon whip takes it out, that flue was already gone and a rod brush would have finished it off the next sweep anyway. The guys saying whips are for lazy workers are mostly the same guys who take two hours to do a cleaning and charge for it. I still keep rods on the truck for the nasty tar jobs and for anything the whip can't reach, but for a standard 40 foot run that whip is just faster and the tile does not care either way. I did crack one tile once, but it was already spalled from a chimney fire years before and it fell apart if you looked at it wrong.
6