SootEater Rotary Chimney Cleaning System - Gardus RCH205-B Chimney Sweep Kit, Cleans Open Chimneys up to 18' with 6 Flexible 3' Rods, Chimney Cleaning Kit with Trim-to-Fit Spinning Chimney Whip

UPDATE (Oct 18, 2014): Added another star to the four I gave it last year. I just finished my annual chimney clean today using this item... last winter I burned ~2.5 full cords (not facing/kitchen cords) of which ~30% was not well seasoned and there was an easy 1/4" to 1/2" of soot and creosote build-up. Suffice to say, I was a little anxious about the task at hand. It was cold and rainy outside and top down cleaning really wasn't an option so armed with my chimney soot whacker, shop vac and flash light, I set-up in the living room and went about cleaning from the bottom. I had anticipated a 2-3 hour ordeal chipping away at layer after layer of solidified smoke but in the first five minutes of cleaning the firebox and damper, I realised it was going to be a breeze. The whipping trimmer line made light work of everything glued to the sides and I found myself done inside 25mins... not only was it quick, but I was super happy with how clean it ended up too. For those of you wondering; I also found cleaning from the bottom up to be heaps quicker, safer, cleaner and all round just easier. No ladders, roof pitch, chimney caps, dust in your face or dropped tools to deal with. Just make sure there is a decent draft going up the chimney (or the dust will inevitably end up on the inside of your house!). I didn't bother with the instructions to seal the fireplace opening with a plastic sheet, I just had the shop vac (with a 1 micron fine dust filter) running the entire time with the suction pipe pointed up into the chimney. And just to be clear, I have no ties/affiliation with the reseller/manufacturer of this device - I'd be suspicious of such a glowing review myself but I'm honestly just an impressed user. ORIGINAL REVIEW (Nov 1, 2013): I paid $275 earlier this year to have a chimney cleaned in a new residence with no real idea of the service delivered (I'm originally from Queensland, Australia, chimney cleaning is an absolute non-issue; what can I say?). Nonetheless, I'm a Mech. Engineer with an innate drive for DIY so I figured this product would suit my prep for a snow belt winter in Western NY... we've got two options for heating our ~3000sq.ft. log cabin; propane or a relatively large wood fireplace (with recirculated heat-exchanged air) that sits in a vaulted ceiling living room. With the math done, wood burning is by far the cheapest (and warmest) method of heating the house... I'm fully aware it's not the most environmentally friendly method but at almost ~$1000p.a. saving I figure I can put that toward offsetting the increased carbon I contribute ;-) Add in the $275 saved not having to use a sweep and I might feel like a wind farmer! Getting back to the real point, this product is great... I worked from the top down with the damper closed (to decrease the possibility of dust issues in the house) and was blown away by how effective it is at removing chimney build-up of all kinds (glaze, creosote and soot). Glaze is incredibly hard to remove without solvent (and the manual does suggest professional help for glaze) but I was surprised to see how much it did remove. It is essentially a weed whacker/trimmer for your chimney and I'm confident it replaces a chimney sweep for 90% of people that have educated themselves on having a safe chimney. It did a great job removing build-up on the grate in the chimney cap as well... Having said all that, don't go buying this thinking it'll save you doing hard labour to keep your chimney clean... it's simply a great tool that will save time in the process. If you can't be bothered spending the better part of a day a year to inspect and keep your chimney in order then I'd recommend you use a professional sweep instead. The rod couplings are a decent design and I had no issues with disconnections... just make sure you keep the chuck tight on the drill (if you're doing top down) and it'll be fine. The fact it's been designed to work with readily available trimmer line is just icing on the cake; most other manufacturers would make it proprietary for the added financial benefit but common sense has prevailed here... hip hooray! N.B. Don't be an idiot; this thing creates dust that contains all kinds of toxins... the top down approach is likely the worst (the updraft in most chimneys WILL come back at you!) so please use a dust mask. AND, if you use a vac for final clean-up downstairs, use a filter rated for fireplace soot/ash!

Great product. Works perfectly! I purchased this to be able to clean my own pellet stove instead of pay 150-200 every year to have it done. My stove vents through the roof and I have approx 25 feet of 4" vent that has 4-45 degree elbows in it. I was really unsure if this product would work well for my use due to the length of the vent pipe but I ordered 4 extra 3' extensions and I was able to use 21' of the extension rods no problem down my vent. The brush goes down really easily without putting alot of stress on the rods and the drill. It also cleans really well as it goes down the vent. One quick pass and all debris were cleaned away. Because of the way my vent is situated I took the top cap off from up on the roof and went down to the stove. Behind my stove there is a cleanout that only have about 2 inches of space between the bottom of the cleanout and the floor. Because I was just a few feet short of extensions to clean my entire vent pipe I finished the last few feet from the bottom and the flexible rods were able to be used in that tight bend without issue. In-fact I am confident I could clean the entire thing from behind the stove even with that sharp bend. Overall a great product. Works really well and very quick and easy. Even the included cleaning brush comes in handy and was not just extra un-needed junk. I was also really concerned about using as many extension rods as I have to use to clean my entire vent but I am confident I could even put more of them on without issue!

I purchased the system plus two additional sets of rods since my chimney is approximately 26' tall. It is a prefabricated 6" double-wall insulated stainless steel chimney, with clean-out tee at the bottom. The tee cover is 21" above the floor. This review is based on only one usage so far. Although I probably had only about 1/8" of soot and creosote build-up following the first six weeks the chimney was in use, the Gardus SootEater appeared to clean everything right down to the metal, except for a dark-brown patina (which is good, since bright shiny metal would have indicated possible scratching or abrasion of the stainless steel surface, something the manufacturer clearly warns against). I'll probably use the device twice per season, once in mid-season and once at the end of burning season. Although the manual strongly recommends that this device is no substitute for an annual inspection/cleaning by a certified chimney sweep, I suspect this is a disclaimer for liability purposes. If it gets the chimney this clean at the end of season, I see no need for the services of a chimney sweep, except maybe once every few years to inspect the condition of the chimney near the top for any possible need for repairs. My unit and the extra rods I purchased are black, as opposed to the white rods shown in the video. I suspect they added the black outer jacket to protect the flexible rod from abrasion, but I also suspect this makes the rod stiffer and a little harder to manage. I was not able to completely clean the bottom 2-3 feet of the chimney because the rod was too stiff to properly make the bend into the first couple of feet, even though I was able to follow their recommendation to maintain less than 90 degrees of bend in the rod. I'll probably try a regular plastic brush with a short rod to clean the very bottom. A shortened version of their flexible rod would also work, to allow the drill to face straight up vertically into the chimney without the bend in the rod, while cleaning the first few feet. The plastic sheet they provided for sealing off the hole while cleaning was totally useless. At first I tried cleaning without using anything to stop up the hole, letting the soot/creosote drop into a pan on the floor below. This was a little messy, but the main problem I had with doing it that way was that the sharp edge of the interior sheet metal sleeve in the tee, cut deeply into the outer jacket of the first rod I tried to use, and would have severely damaged each rod if I had continued. Instead, I cut out a round disc the same size as the tee cover from a piece of scrap 1/2" plywood, drilled a slightly eccentric hole in the plywood large enough to pass the rod through, and fashioned a bracket to hold the disc in place at the bottom of the tee during the cleaning operation. This keeps the rotating rod spaced towards the centre of the flue as it bends up into the chimney. The wood still leaves visible surface marks on the outer jacket of the rod, but doesn't cut into the black plastic sleeve the way the bare edge of the sheet metal did. The entire cleaning process took less than an hour, not counting the time I spent fashioning the wooden disc and holding bracket, and left minimal mess when I removed the disc and let the soot fall into the pan. I believe the red trimmer string they use on the cleaning head is the same stuff used with a regular string-trimmer for lawn work. I plan to try using some of that when it comes time to replace the string. It would likely be much cheaper, and available locally whenever I need it, rather than having to wait for an order to arrive. At this point, I believe the SootEater is an excellent product, allowing routine cleaning multiple times during heating season with minimal time and cost, but someone who is knowledgeable and handy with a few basic shop tools will be more likely to have a satisfactory outcome with the device.

I am actually surprised at how good a job this tool does. Bought one last year to clean a 30 foot flue( 8 inch round refractory liner). Last year I used the 6" thimble on the second floor to clean the sections above and below the thimble so the 6 three foot sections did it. It seemed to due a good job although I didn't inspect it very closely afterwards. I did get about 1/2 a 5 gallon bucket of dry ash. Unfortunately that thimble was filled in this fall so the only access was the cleanout very close to the basement floor, or the 6 " wood stove thimble about 3 feet above it. I now have 30 feet of flue to clean froom either the roof or the basement. We did an inspection of the chimney top and I did notice a sustantial glaze of creasote on the inspectable flue sections at the top. It was what you might not like to see, hard , jet black ,glassy. I'm sure it's from burning wood that wasn't seasoned completely. Although it's not recommended, I bought a second kit after deciding to do it from the basement thimble, all 30 feet. It worked fantastic .I was worried about damaging the rods on the inside edge of the thimble so I got a piece of 1" Pex tubing (about 13" long) and used that as a protective sleeve for the rods to guide and protect them as they spun and moved upwards into the flue. I was able to hold on to the Pex like a handle as the rods had room to spin easily as they were fed up the chimney. This little trick made it so much easier, and safer because now you can contol the spinning rod without holding it directly. You can buy the 1" Pex at hardware stores for a couple bucks. Use a quality cordless drill , as recommended. I feel like I may have been getting pretty close to the mechanical limits of the rods at 30 feet, as I couldn't turn them by hand by the time I hooked the last sections on, but they none broke, and my Makita cordless turned them easily even at the end. I agree with the manufacturer that a corded drill is liable to apply to much torque and snap a rod, especially as you add lengths. Finally, unlike last year I did a close inspection of the finished job and found that even the hard creasote glaze on the top sections had been removed, to the point of the granular stucture of the liner being exposed. Although I know some may disagee, I feel this is the best cleaning this chimney has got, better than my old brush , with much less effort. If I can get a couple more seasons of use from these to kits, and I believe I will, I would consider this a great value based on a job well done and not needing to climb 2.5 stories onto the roof to clean the flue every time it needs to be done.

This chimney cleaner is one the best ideas I've seen in a long time. I put a metal roof on my house a few years ago and between that and getting older I really hated getting up there to clean the chimney. I'd let my chimney go way too long without a cleaning and the 8" square flue was down to the size of a coke can when I looked up through it with a mirror...the draft was bad and I was scared to even use the stove. I ordered two of these kits as I needed about 30 feet of rod on a Tuesday night and on Saturday the kits were delivered. I was very skeptical if the plastic rotating head would do anything against the heavy build, but figured I had nothing to lose. Sunday morning I moved the stove, pulled the pipe and tapped the metal thimble out of the chimney to lessen the required bending radius and remove the sharp metal edge. I used a piece of 1 1/2" PVC about 16 inches long as a bushing for the rod so it wouldn't scrape on the rough edges of the masonry and to help guide the rod through the opening. I made a plastic barrier to put over the opening with the PVC pipe sticking through it and then started feeding sections up the chimney and spinning both ways with the drill.....WOW! It worked great and I ended up shoveling about 20 gallons of creosote and soot out of the bottom of the flue. Looking up with a mirror shows that the flue is as clean. I don't think that a wire brush pushed down in flue in the traditional top to bottom cleaning method would have done any better job. I would make the recommendation that you use a decent sized drill for the spinning. No problem with my 18 Volt DeWalt. I did a whole lot of spinning to make sure I got all the junk out I could. I also think the PVC pipe made things a lot easier and helped protect the rods from getting chewed up. I also cleaned up the rods real good and sprayed some oil on the connection ends so they will be in good shape next time I use the system. Took me 2 hours from start to finish of the job. Moving and reconnecting the stove the biggest time eater and a couple smoke breaks. Bottom line is that I HIGHLY recommend this product and wish I had found it earlier. Wish they had an option of 6 stars!

The chimney that I got this for has 8 inch by 16 inch clay flues. It was pretty dirty, see the photos. The sweep is made of plastic poles with metal ends that snap together with an indexing pin. They seem plenty sturdy for the intended use and I expect that this could clean dozens or hundreds of flues without issue. The poles are rigid enough to spin the head reliably while flexible enough to bend into the chimney. The drill attachment was secure. The head is several tines of thick weed whip line, which are flexible enough to bend into the shape of a smaller flue. In fact, I recommend buying the bigger one and just trimming the tines if the flue size requires. They're quite flexible and although they were oversize for my application, they worked great without overloading the drill or making it hard to control. I think larger is better here, as a smaller head may want to bounce around, particularly when you have several poles length. I do recommend performing this work from the top if possible. This is what I did, since my customer also needed his chimney cap sealed. Make sure to cover the fireplace opening very well, use several pieces of plastic, each taped on to provide as airtight of a seal as possible. It's hard to overstate this point, the ash dust is very fine and will drift throughout your home if it can. If you must do it from below, I would recommend that you create a tent out of plastic to work from. This is a quality item (for what it is) not a cheap one use product. It should serve me for the foreseeable future. I just cleaned it off with the hose and let it dry in the sun. Cleanup was super simple.

I ordered this in 2020 and have been using for cleaning our chimney for four heating seasons. We use a wood stove as our primary heat. We grew too old to place and climb the heavy ladder to the second story roof to brush out our chimney. Our neighbors started yelling at us in horror because my husband is 80 and I’m 74. Rather than be dependent upon them, I ordered this system and now we can easily clean our own chimney regardless of weather any time we want. The cleaning is good and easy. This year I want to report that I sprayed graphite on the button ferrules and what a difference. For all of you wrestling to detach the sections, graphite will make the job easy. It used to take two of us to clean just because of needing two people to pull the rod sections apart. Now that the ferrules have been sprayed with graphite, I can do the entire job myself!! I have replaced the whipper snipper cord a few times now with heavy cord from the hardware store. I zip tie the cords on each side of the center ball to hold the cord in place. This system is still working after 4 years with no problem whatsoever. It has made us safe and independent. It cleans right to the top of our lined chimney without damaging it. We can clean often because the chore is no big deal.

I recently moved to the mountains near a ski resort and I have two prefab fireplaces both which needed a cleaning badly. After researching I realized it's looks rather easy to DIY. This tool got so many positive reviews I thought I'd try it. Measuring my two fireplaces I knew I needed 24 feet of rods for one and 30 feet for the other. The package comes with 18 feet of rods (6 @ 3 feet ea) so I purchased 2 more sets of rods. With tax I think I paid around $85 for everything. I figured it's and investment one cleaning for both would be well over $200 if I called a pro. The verdict is it really does work very well. I was done in about 45 min total. Its not rocket science and you never have to climb up a ladder. And if you use the plastic sheeting they give you its not even a dirty job...at all. All the soot falls neatly in the fireplace then you just use a shopvac to vac it out. The only thing I think they can improve on is the rods are a bit of a hassle to take off as your coming down every three fee or so. It's not too hard but I just think the little tool they give you can be designed to make it easier. Just my opinion. ALSO MANY PEOPLE SAID YOU NEED A DRILL WITH A CORD FOR ELECTRICITY FOR THE NEEDED POWER. NO YOU DONT!!! I have a Ryobi cordless 18v drill that's 10 years old and it worked flawlessly. I didn't even need to recharge the battery it's was more than efficient enough. I was very happy how well designed the whole thing is and how easy it was to use. Well done. Highly recommended.

I put the plastic sheet over the front of the wood stove and a tarp on the floor then inserted the drill attached whip from under the sheet. The moment I pulled the trigger on the drill soot started to fall. It took about 10 minutes to do the whole chimney using 4 of the 6 included shafts. I'd say that about a kilo of soot was removed. In the end there was no mess other than a dusty drill and gloves. It was actually so easy that I can't believe I put this off for so long and almost paid someone to sweep the chimney for me. Well worth the money spent.

It arrived on time and having used it to clean the chimney we no longer have the smoke problems we had with our wood burner.

I have approximately 28' of chimney (6" selkirk insulated) with an 30 degree offset after 15' on my 2 storey house. Initially I didn't like that I had to buy 2 kits to reach that height, but as someone else said it's nice to have the spare head and a couple rods. Works out to be comparably priced anyway. After reading reviews about heavy wobbling or vibration I decided to use a lighter drill on the first speed setting and run it slow and smooth. It did a great job and the chimney does look and feel like new. I did notice a few very small cuts / scratches on some of the rods (probably happened at the chimney offset) but no symptoms of stress at the joints. Probably because I didn't jam it in there with my biggest, baddest, brushless high torque drill. After the next cleaning, it's money well spent and owes me nothing.

On first use the rods failed when using in line with the instructions. We have had this product before and not had any issues but this time the rods that arrived were not the same as we have had before and not the same as in the picture at sale. We would like them replaced with the original style (white) rods or refunded.

Haven't done a complete chimney flue clean yet but tested it on a length of creosote coated flue in the shed. It works well. For the last 22 years I have used a brush type of cleaner which is pulled down the flue with rope. Third world idea with third world results. This year I dismantled eight sections of flue and scraped the build up of creosote off each section with a paint scraper. Then I reassembled the flue and put in new rivets. This gadget you have sent me will save me time, extreme annoyance and improve my health since I now expect the smoke to go up the flue instead of into the house.