Took me 8 years to realize I was brushing chimney caps wrong

I always scraped the cap from the top down, caked in creosote, fighting it the whole time. Last spring a homeowner watched me do a cleaning in Portland and asked why I wasn't popping the cap off first. Turns out 3 of the 4 screws on his unit were stripped anyway, so I had to replace the whole thing on the spot. Now I check those screws before I even grab my brush, has anyone else been doing this backwards for years?

2 comments

2 Comments

jamesm4822d ago

Drove out to a job last fall where the homeowner had already watched three YouTube videos and was convinced I needed to rebuild his whole fireplace from scratch. Turns out the damper was just stuck shut with a bent handle. Fixed it in twenty minutes with a pair of pliers I keep in my truck for exactly that kind of thing. He still paid me for the full hour and asked if I could show his wife how to light a fire without filling the room with smoke. Spent another thirty minutes explaining wood moisture and kindling placement, which is way more about technique than most folks think. Anyway, those stripped screws are a real pain, but at least you caught it before the cap went flying off on a windy day.

nathanj5621d ago

My buddy runs a handyman side gig and he had this old lady call him about a toilet that wouldnt stop running. She was convinced the whole tank was cracked and needed replacing. He gets out there, pops the lid off, and the flapper chain is just caught under the fill valve. Took him like two minutes to unhook it and set it right. She stood there watching the whole time with this look like he was some kind of wizard. He charged her the minimum and she tipped him twenty bucks because she said he saved her from calling a plumber who would have charged her four hundred. People just get themselves all worked up over stuff they could fix themselves if they had the right eyes on it.