This old guy in a Boston brownstone showed me a trick with a mirror

Honestly, I was cleaning his flue last fall and he came out to watch. He pointed at my inspection mirror and said, 'My dad used to put a dab of grease on the glass to keep soot from sticking.' Tbh, I tried it on the next job and it wiped clean with one pass. Has anyone else heard of this old school hack?

3 comments

3 Comments

luna_wright1mo ago

Yeah, that trick works. Just a thin coat of oil or even dish soap works the same way.

william_harris1mo ago

Oh the dish soap thing... my buddy tried that on his car windows last winter. He got the bright idea to smear a tiny bit on the outside glass to stop ice from sticking. It worked, sort of. But then his wipers just smeared everything into a greasy, blurry mess when it rained. He drove around for a week looking through this weird fog.

mia7001mo ago

No kidding, that grease trick is the real deal! @luna_wright is right, it's the same idea with the soap. I used a tiny bit of WD-40 on a mirror once to check a really grimy crawl space, and the gunk just slid right off. Those old timers really knew how to keep things simple.