Doing it Right

A lot of fireplaces have internal dampers; there is a handle that comes down into the fireplace; you pull the handle towards you to open the damper, and you push it towards the back of the fireplace to close it.  When we sweep these chimneys, the creosote and debris ends up on the smoke shelf behind the damper.

For chimneys that lack rain caps/animal guards, there is usually an accumulation on the smoke shelf of various things, which can include leaves, twigs, bird carcasses and nests, milk cartons, chunks of plaster, rocks, pieces of steel: anything and everything that ever climbed, flew, fell or was dropped down the chimney...is still sitting there behind that damper.

When Bailey's Chimney C&R cleans a chimney with an internal damper, we do it right.  That means removing whatever is behind the damper on the smoke shelf.  To do this, we have two options:

1. Disassemble damper and scrape what is on the smoke shelf into a bucket, or
2. Reach up into the smoke shelf with the vacuum hose and vacuum everything out from behind the damper.

We usually choose option 2.  And that is what Marc Black, a certified sweep with Baileys' Santa Fe office, is doing in this photo:

Unfortunately, a lot of chimney sweeps don't take this step, which is actually the most important part of the job.

We at Bailey's, on the other hand, do it right.

--Justin

Does your dryer vent need to be cleaned?

Angie from Angie's List says there are 15,000 house fires every year caused by dryer vents.  That's why Bailey's Chimney Cleaning & Repair made the investment to become the only company in New Mexico certified in dryer vent technology.  We offer a free dryer vent evaluation with every chimney cleaning we do.

The Bailey's Chimney Story (Part 1)

THE BAILEY'S CHIMNEY STORY (Part 1)

How I got into, and then out of, and then back into the chimney business.

My grandfather, Lou Rose, came to Taos, New Mexico in the 1970's, after squandering the family fortune.

Lou was a small man, barely over five feet, and he looked like a miniature, bald, version of the golden-years Sean Connery. When he arrived, he had his 95 year-old mother, Amu, with him.

Amu was hard of hearing to the point where you had to yell in her ear to be understood, and every five minutes or so she would ask what was for dinner.

Up to that point, Lou had spent his life playing golf, chasing women, and spending money. He'd never had a job, he was 65, and he was broke.

A friend of his opened a wood stove store, so Lou got certified to install wood stoves. He'd had never even finished high school and his chimney certification was the first credential he'd ever gotten.

He scrounged up enough dough to buy an old van at an auction, and some second-hand tools, and he became Taos' main wood stove installer/chimney sweep.

He became sort of legendary. People couldn't believe a guy his age would climb up and down ladders, cut holes in their roofs, and worm his way through attics.

The funny thing was, he loved it. He enjoyed installing stoves more than he'd ever enjoyed anything. He was proud to be doing something useful. In his later years he finally experienced the joy of doing service.

When I look at his life, I realize it’s a blessing that he lost the money, because he was a lot better off after he went to work, and it gave him a chance to redeem himself.

His customers adored him. I remember one guy in Angel Fire, whose chimney I was working on, said to me, "If you're even half the man he was, you're alright in my book." Lou had installed his stove.

The chimney business is intertwined with a family redemption story, for me.

I still service those installs my grandfather did 30 years ago. They are perfectly done. I hold myself to that standard when I install stoves.

Lou died when I was 18. Seven years later, I'd been working as the cook for a dude ranch/hunting outfitter, when I moved back to my home town of Taos.

I was a playwright and a puppeteer. I liked seasonal work so I could save money and then take time off to write.

A guy named Wade Elston was looking to hire and train a chimney sweep. It seemed interesting, and seasonal, so I got a meeting with him and as soon as I told him who my grandfather was, Wade's beady, bloodshot eyes got all big and round, and he said "You're hired!"

Bailey's Chimney Story (Part 2)

The Bailey's Chimney Story (Part 2)

Wade told me that when he started his chimney business, when he ran into problems he would call Lou, and Lou would talk on the phone with him in the evenings, "explaining how to attach a chimney to a wall made of beer cans and stuff like that, you know what I mean?" Wade said. "And even though I was his competition, he helped me a lot. You know what I mean?" Last I heard, Wade was selling time shares in Hawaii.

I was 30 when I started my chimney business. I had an old Toyota 4x4 pickup, some tools, and one of those voice mail services where you call in and check your messages.

That same year, after an 8 year absence, I also went back to college to finish my degree. I was certified by the Chimney Safety Institute of America, and within a couple of years I'd build up a base of customers and gotten my diploma from UNM, summa cum laude.

But none of the jobs available to a new college grad seemed as appealing as running my own business in Taos. I bought a fixer upper house, wrote a regular column for a newspaper, and settled in.

Chimney work is a trade, like plumbing or painting or electrical. A lot of people don't understand that. I know the codes, I have the skills and the expertise to make sure your house doesn't burn down.

In 2007, during the slow season, I started volunteering for a national political campaign, a presidential race. The campaign staff seemed to think I was capable, and so they hired me to run the Taos County operation. I closed the chimney business.

The other staffers were young kids mostly straight out of Stanford or Dartmouth or wherever, and then there was me, the chimney guy.

I was out of my comfort zone and in a lot of ways, out of my league. But that's how you grow and develop. It was hundred-hour weeks of constant pressure, for really low pay.

But I never had joined the peace corp, I never joined the military; that campaign was a chance to serve my country. I acquired a set of skills I never would have known existed, and made lots of friends too.

In 2010, I created and coordinated a Congressional Campaign Fellowship Program for Congressman Lujan. The idea was to teach high school and college students how to be politically effective.

Then the Democratic National Committee hired me as regional field director for the 3rd congressional district.

My office was in Santa Fe, and I couldn't help looking at all the chimneys everywhere. I did a little research and learned that none of the chimney sweeps in Santa Fe were certified at the time.

It seemed like an opportunity.

After the 2010 election, I was burned out on politics. I left the DNC and reopened Bailey's Chimney Cleaning & Repair with a branch in Santa Fe.

I'd met Marc Black when he was volunteering for Brian Egolf's campaign in 2010. He'd volunteered to teach the kids in the fellowship program how to canvass, and we clicked. I hired him, trained him for a year, and got him certified. His wife Jenn Kilbourn became our office manager.

In 2012 we had four employees.

Dryer vents are one of the leading causes of house fires, so I decided we should become the experts in preventing that kind of danger. We got certified in dryer vent technology, and we are the only company in New Mexico with that credential.

I still do the occasional political campaign, as a freelance campaign manager/consultant. My last client was a district judge in a Democratic Primary race. She won by almost ten points.

Some people think its strange that I'm a chimney sweep but I also do political work. I tell them there's nothing strange about it: they are the two dirtiest businesses in the world.

In the meantime I apply lessons of political organizing to the chimney business, and sometimes it works.

Some of our customers will organize their neighbors for a day of chimney service in exchange for a screaming deal on our services.

Thanks for taking the time to read this, and I hope I get the chance to meet you soon.

The Favicon

This photo is by Heather Sparrow. She took it the first year I was in business, just after I started Bailey's Chimney Cleaning & Repair, and I've been using this image in my promotional materials ever since. I'm a few years older now than when she took the picture, and a few pounds heavier, but I still enjoy the opportunity to help my neighbors be prepared, self sufficient, and safe. Bailey's Chimney Cleaning & Repair does all aspects of chimney service: Cleanings, Inspections, Installations, Troubleshooting, Consulting, and Repairs. We are the only company in New Mexico Certified by the Chimney Safety Institute of America to service dryer vents. We are the experts in dryer Vent Evaluations, repairs, installation, and cleaning. We have offices in Santa Fe (505) 988-2771 and Taos (575) 770-7769. We serve all of North Central New Mexico.

Sweeping in the Winter

My friend Dorie Hagler took this photo years ago on a way-below-zero day in Taos Ski Valley. That's me on the ladder. She did a photo essay/article on my chimney work for the Taos News.

Bailey's Chimney at Work--VIDEO!

This video shows the Bailey's crew hard at work cleaning a chimney near Arroyo Seco, NM.

How To Build A Fire

1. Lay two logs side by side on floor of firebox with 4 to 6 inches of space in between them.
2. Crumple 2 or 3 sheets of newspaper loosely, place between logs.
3. Lay kindling across newspaper so it is supported by the logs but bridges over the paper
4. Lay a medium sized log diagonally on top of the kindling so that each of the bottom two logs will support it when the kindling is burning up.
5. Light the newspaper on fire.
6. The fire will eat its way down onto the bottom two logs once the kindling catches on fire.
7.  Once the newspaper is burned up, there will plenty of space for air to feed the fire.

Wood Heat is Green Energy

This may sound crazy, but believe it or not heating your home with wood in an EPA approved, contemporary, efficient wood stove is good for the environment.

What?  That can't be true.   

It's true.  Let me explain.  It begins with the cycle of life.  As a tree grows, it does this magic thing where it mixes carbon dioxide (CO2) from the air, water (H2O) from the ground, and solar energy from sun to create wood fibers.  Well, its a little bit more complicated than that and there's even a chemical formula for this thing trees do; its called photosynthesis; but the bottom line is that trees collect CO2 from the air and while they do that, they put Oxygen out into the air and so its a great deal all the way around, this carbon cycle of life.

Yeah but so then how does burning wood in a wood stove help the environment?  

According to a lot of scientists, there is a phenomenon called global warming that is caused by something called the greenhouse effect, which is caused by too much CO2 in the air, which some of those scientists have gone way out on a political limb and ventured to say there is too much CO2 in the atmosphere because of the stuff we humans burn to provide for our energy needs.  Of course they say it in a bunch of scientific words some of us don't really understand but the gist is that when billions of humans are constantly burning things like coal, natural gas, propane, and petroleum products such as gasoline and diesel, etc, it releases billions of tons of CO2 into the atmosphere, which then somehow makes everything a little bit warmer, which is causing the glaciers to melt away, the seas to rise, and lots of bad hurricanes and whatnot that messes stuff up.  For the skeptics out there, I'll just mention that when I was in the Bolivian Andes a few years ago and when I was in Glacier National Park last year I saw with my own eyes, via photos taken of the glaciers over the past 100 years, that the glaciers are indeed melting away and are more than halfway receded from where they were 100 years ago.  

Yeah but so what does that have to do with burning wood in a wood stove?  Doesn't burning wood in a wood stove also produce CO2 that gets released into the atmosphere?  

Well, yes in fact it does.  But the CO2 released when you burn wood in your wood stove is the exact same amount of CO2 that was collected by the tree when that tree was busy producing that wood.

But I don't have a wood stove.  

If you care about the environment, and you live in a somewhat rural, forested area, you might want to get one.  Because see if you can follow me here.

a) A live tree grows and while it grows it collects CO2 from air. 

b) The tree eventually dies, whether from natural or manmade causes.

c) Wood from dead tree either either burns in a forest fire or decomposes or is converted to building products or paper, which building products or paper or whatever will eventually either burn or decompose in the overall eventual scheme of things, because, like, ashes to ashes and dust to dust and all that.

d) Whether the wood from the tree ends up burning (in a forest fire or a wood stove) or decomposing (on the forest floor or in a landfill), it releases the same exact amount of CO2 into the atmosphere as it collected from the atmosphere when it was engaged in photosynthesis, living and growing.  

e)  That exchange of CO2 that trees do is part of the NATURAL cycle of life.  When the tree is alive it  borrows the CO2 from the atmosphere.  That CO2 will be paid back at a later date.  

f)  So burning some wood in the wood stove doesn't add any CO2 to the atmosphere that the atmosphere didn't have coming to it anyway, eventually. 

Yeah but so if you burn the dead wood from the dead tree the CO2 gets released into the atmosphere a lot faster than if the wood decomposes and if you think CO2 causes global warming then you are causing global warming by burning wood in your wood stove.  

Yes and no.  If the dead wood stays in the forest and the forest catches on fire and the whole big giant tree burns all at once, a lot more CO2 gets released a lot quicker than if that dead tree is harvested and burned little by little as a source of heat for your home.  And meanwhile, the wood gatherers who go to the woods and gather the wood to sell for firewood are mostly required by law to only gather wood that is already dead, except in some cases where its part of a forest thinning project that somebody smart determined is good for the forest for forest fire prevention reasons.  So if you get your wood yourself, or buy it from an honest vendor, you can be reasonably certain that the wood was already dead when it was collected from the forest, or if it wasn't already dead, it would have eventually ended up burning in a forest fire anyway.    And meanwhile that same dead wood, if it stays in the forest, makes forest fires more likely to occur and more severe if/when they do occur, which by the way, a lot of really smart people are starting to say one of the results of global warming is, what do you know, more forest fires and worse forest fires.  So anyway, it is actually GOOD for the forest to collect firewood, as long as that wood is dead when you collect it or taken from an area where the forest needs thinning anyway. 

Okay but so why do you keep saying wood stove, wood stove, wood stove?  What's wrong with a fireplace?  Don't the same principles apply in terms of the carbon cycle if you burn wood in a fireplace.

Yes those principles apply, but wood stoves have tremendous advantages.  Like you get about 8 times more heat in your house from burning the same amount of wood.

Yeah but my fireplace puts out a lot of heat.  

Most of that heat ends up going right up the chimney.  The most efficient fireplace, unless it is a wood stove that is built into a wall and looks like a fireplace, like for example a BIS or other similar type appliance, is about 10 percent efficient, and will emit around 50 grams per hour of particulate pollutants, which is the sooty black stuff that makes smoke look like smoke and smell like smoke and generates a hazy inversion of smoggy stuff on cold mornings.  Same with old wood stoves--look at the the top of the chimney and you'll see it belching out smoke.

Newer wood stoves, manufactured since 1990, approved by the Environmental Protection Agency to meet stringent emissions standards, emit as few as 3 grams per hour of particulate matter.

My wood stove will be heating the house full blast and if you look at the top of the chimney all you can see is a little bit of water vapor coming out the top.  Meanwhile, since my house is nice and warm without the use of fossil fuels or electricity powered generated by coal or nuclear, I am fortunate enough to heat my home with a local, renewable form of energy.  And that is why heating with wood is good for the environment.   And so I'm all out of time for now, but that is an explanation of why heating with wood, in an efficient, EPA approved wood stove, is good for the environment.

    

A chimney sweep's perfect Monday

Today started off like this, with a stovepipe to un-clog.

Service!

I love being of service.

It gives meaning to my life--and pays the bills too.

And ends up like this, after my 1st hike up the ridge, at 12,500 (or so)  feet, with the whole ridge all to myself and a pretty view of Wheeler peak and the bowl of mountains that surround Williams Lake to visible off to the East, on my skis:

And then after the 2nd hike up the ridge, (I'm getting used to this hike, it almost just feels like a stroll up the neighborhood street) looking at the view to the North before jetting off the cornice: there is Lobo Peak, Gold Hill and way off in the distance Mt. Baldy in Colorado; and right below me under that cornice, some still-soft snow to ski, an avalanche chute

 called "Ninos Heroes."

Being up there, after a brisk walk wearing ski boots and carrying skis, breaking a sweat, legs warmed up, feeling 100 percent alive all by myself not lonely at all.

Troubles?
Problems?

I forgot what those are.    

The Joy of Building a Fire

Building a fire to keep warm is a primal, instinctive bit of work.

There is some kindling to be chopped, some paper to be crumpled, some wood to be laid out, a match or a lighter light.    The photo above is the wood stove at my house taken immediately after I lit tonight's fire.  This appliance, a Pacific Energy Super 27 wood burning stove, is my primary source of heat in the winter.

Usually I build a fire once a day, in the evening time.  A few logs in the stove will burn for many hours.  In the morning there are still a few live embers in the firebox and the house is still nice and warm.  On a normal morning, I'll usually let the embers die out.  But when its cold, like around 15 below zero like we've had on a few recent mornings, I'll lay some new kindling, a couple logs and some paper over the embers and get the fire going again.

Building a fire in my wood stove keeps me feeling connected with an elemental part of life.  The work involved is a kind of meditation.  Its one of those actions that brings me to a place where it seems like the world as it is coincides with the world as it should be, if that makes sense.

Thanks, Prometheus.