Chimneys are great to keep the smoke of the fireplace away from the inside of the house. But a chimney also needs to be cleaned preferably by chimney sweep services. A lot of people might wonder if they can clean their chimneys with a pressure washer. Here is everything you need to know about this.

No Moisture On Brick Chimneys

Most chimneys are made out of bricks. Bricks are like sponges when they are exposed to water or moisture. Although some moisture is fine, you don’t want to douse the chimney in water to clean it. It’s always a good idea to wash your chimney and let it air dry completely before you use it for the fireplace. This will save you a lot of money and time and your fireplace will also work better.

Clean The Chimney First

If you do want to clean the brick chimney with a pressure washer, then you most certainly can, but there are some things you need to keep in mind for that.

First, you can’t just go ahead and clean the chimney with a pressure hose. You need to dry clean it first from the inside and out. By using a brush and scraper, first, you need to clean and buff off the walls of the chimney. There might be a lot of soot and creosote residue on the walls of the chimney. This is why you need to clean it with a dry brush first, because if you douse it with water, the soot will solidify even more and the walls will get more crusty and hard for you to clean.

So, before using a washer, make sure to clean it with a brush, working on the inside first, then moving to the outer walls. This will save you a lot of water when you do actually power up the pressure washer and cleaning it will be a piece of cake.

Not to mention, your chimney will also stay cleaner for longer, if you clean it this way, than using water alone.

Set The Optimum Pressure

For brick chimneys, you cannot just use any setting of pressure. It will lead to cracking and damage of the bricks and you will be in for a whole new task. You will need to set an optimal pressure of 400 psi and with a fan hose, you will disperse the water even better and this will get rid of the loose dirt and soot lining on the walls of the chimney. A fan hose also deposits the water in a light spray, but with enough pressure that the dirt comes off in a second and the chimney looks a lot more clean.

Pressure Washing For Stain Removal

You might see a lot of stains on your chimney when it has been dirty for a long time. There are either white, red or brown stains. White stains are present due to the burning of firewood and the residue which is left behind is creosote. This is the white residue of firewood. Brown and red stains are due to the iron deposits on the walls of the chimney. In order to get rid of these stains, using a pressure washer is perfect and super easy. You can just wash the stains away in the blink of an eye.

Use It On A Stucco Chimney

Pressure washers are great to use on a stucco chimney. Stucco chimneys can get dirty pretty quickly, because there are a lot of nooks and cracks which are perfect deposits for dirt and dust. Using a pressure washer will get this dirt off the chimney in no time and you will see how clean the chimney looks. Stucco also responds better to moisture and water than bricks, so it is quite safe to use a pressure washer on stucco without having to worry about damaging it or making it vulnerable to cracks.

Conclusion

There you have it! You can use a pressure washer on your chimney, but make sure that you are using it on the right material, so that it doesn’t ruin your chimney and its structure. For preventing damage to your chimney and fireplace, hire chimney cleaning services Ellicott City to remove soot and creosote residue safely from your chimney.