Art of Casey’s Top Hat cleaned the chimney. He seems a good, kind, patient person. The trouble was that he didn’t know how to remove our woodstove baffle to clean the chimney. With the Quadra-Fire, you either remove the pipe from the top of the stove or you remove the baffle; otherwise, the baffle would become congested with the chimney soot.
I told him several times that it might be better to cancel the appointment. I felt extremely anxious when he started removing the screws to the combustion tubes and pulled out the kaowool blanket because I really wanted to cancel the appointment. I took out the manual for the woodstove to read the steps to removing the baffle to him. He thanked me for that later. I said again that it might be better to cancel the appointment but he said to be patient with him and he continued working on removing the baffle.
At one point, as he was struggling with how to remove the baffle, I asked him about removing the pipe from the top of the stove and he said it might get scratched. At the end of the job though, he changed his mind and said it would be better to remove the pipe than go through all that’s involved in removing the baffle.
He lost the washer to one of the combustion pipe retaining screws in the stove but, after lifting bricks up from the bottom of the stove, was able to find it. I put the retaining screws aside for safekeeping.
He eventually got the baffle out and went up on top of the roof to sweep the chimney. First, I had to ask him for something to cover the TV (right next to the woodstove) even though he assured me that the stove was airtight and nothing would come out.
When he got done on the roof, he told me that his brush couldn’t reach past the bend and he would try brushing it from inside. I’m not entirely sure that this effort, with brushes that looked too short to reach the bend, effectively cleaned the bend from inside but he told me that there wasn’t much soot in the stove pipe.
When he was done, I don’t know if he looked up the stovepipe to make sure it was cleaned and he didn’t mention if there was any glazed creosote buildup in addition to the soot he brushed out. He went out to get another brush to reassure me that the bend was cleaned but then he was moving the stove as he was trying to get the brush into the bend and I expressed concern that the pipes might be damaged.
At some point in this process, either when he was brushing the pipe from the bottom up or when he was vacuuming out the soot, I could smell creosote. I probably ended up breathing some of the fine particulate in because I was in the living room at the time.
He cleaned out all his gear and then came back in with a bill that was $99 for the cleaning and $50 for the baffle removal. I balked and said that Darlene told me that the cost would be $95-$115, depending on the pipe bend. I told him that I would pay $115 + tax and he refigured the bill for that amount.
I wish I hadn’t signed the statement that he had fully informed me about the condition of our stovepipe because, other than saying it wasn’t that dirty, he hadn’t. He should have told me if there was any glazed creosote buildup that his brush couldn’t dislodge.
All in all, it was a very stressful experience because I was worried about him damaging the stove when he took out the baffle and put it back. Now, I’m worried about lung cancer from breathing in the soot. The most important worry, though, is that I still don’t know if the woodstove is in safe operating condition. I didn’t know about the glazed creosote until I was Googling about the dangers of breathing in fine particulates. It didn’t seem like he was up on the chimney very long at all and I doubt that he thoroughly cleaned it.
I will never use Casey’s Top Hat again. I told spouse that the next time the chimney needs cleaning, we’ll replace the stove. If I had my way, I would not have a woodstove. I will call Darlene to give feedback to her about the whole experience.