Hot take: I stopped brushing flues by feel and started using a cheap camera, and my callback rate dropped to almost nothing | Chimney Sweeps - SMM Buzz
Hot take: I stopped brushing flues by feel and started using a cheap camera, and my callback rate dropped to almost nothing
For 9 years I did every flue the old way, rod and brush, then a mirror and a flashlight if I could not see past the smoke shelf. Bought a $60 USB borescope off Amazon last March and now I run it up every liner before I pack up, and I have found glaze cracks on 3 jobs this month that a mirror never would have shown me. Anybody else switched to a camera, and how long did it take you to trust what you see on the screen over what your arm tells you?
Trust is the hard part, but the arm can only feel so much, it has no idea if that crack runs all the way through the clay. What really sold me was going back over old jobs where I knew there was a problem and seeing the camera catch it every time, after about a dozen of those the screen stopped feeling like a second opinion. Now the mirror is just for the quick look and the scope is the actual inspection.