Al Carrell: Mirror, mirror, on the wall, who's the handiest of them all? Whoops, you caught me, didn't you. Actually, I'm going to use this mirror to help check out the fireplace. It's something that everybody ought to do. If you have a fireplace, check it out. The first thing you're going to do is use this mirror, after we open the damper, to shine this flashlight up in there with a good strong light, and angle it so that we can see what's going on up there. And we can look for bird nests, we can look for soot deposits or anything like that. Maybe that'll save us a trip up on the roof. Another thing you want to do is to check the inside wall here, to see if there are any cracks in the bricks. If there are any cracks they can act sort of like chimneys and suck the fire in and if it's anything combustible in behind there, which there probably is, then you could have a house fire and not even know it's going on. Another thing that you want to do is after you get through having your first fire, you're going to find that you probably forgot to open the damper and that means you're going to end up with smoke stains up here. Now there are products you can buy that will clean the smoke stains. As far as I'm concerned, TSP is one of the best things you can do. You can take a half a cup of the TSP powder. Put it in two quarts of water and get a scrub brush, wear your rubber gloves, and it will get rid of all the smoke damage. If you do have soot up the chimney, then it is a dangerous thing, if it builds up enough, and there are soot removers that you can get that chemically burn it off. If you'll get your fireplace whipped into shape you can have lots of fun out in front of this fireplace on a bearskin rug.
Episode 012 1995 - 96 Season
| Heating and AC | Fireplace Checkup | Faux Walls | Cleaning Gutters | Backyard Putting Green | Bi Weekly Mortgage Payments |LIST |
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