That hidden mortar pocket took me 7 hours to clear

I was doing a routine sweep on a house built in the 1920s here in Portland and kept getting zero draft. Turns out the previous owner had shoved old mortar chunks down the flue from a repointing job 15 years ago and they wedged into a narrow section. I had to run my rotary brush 6 times and then hand scrape for 3 more hours to get it all out. Has anyone else dealt with debris jammed way down in the flue like that?

3 comments

3 Comments

wyatt_mitchell261mo ago

Man that's brutal. A buddy of mine runs a shop over in Beaverton and he had a job where some genius used a chimney as a trash chute during a remodel. Took him damn near a whole day to fish out chunks of drywall and old insulation that had settled down in there.

sean_cooper581mo ago

Gotta love when someone turns a fireplace into a garbage disposal. Hope they at least saved a few bucks on dumpster fees.

anderson.piper1mo ago

Close... more like they used it as a trash chute, not a disposal... big difference in how much work it is to clean out.