by Mary Rupert
This is a busy time of year for one of the nation’s foremost chimney sweeps.
Jeremy Biswell, president of the National Chimney Sweep Guild for the past year, is also the owner, with his wife, of Fluesbrothers Chimney Service at 1701 Southwest Blvd., Kansas City, Kan.
At this time of year, after a rainy summer and as cold weather approaches, some residents are having their chimneys inspected for safety, as well as repairing chimneys and installing fireplaces, gas fireplaces and woodstoves, according to Biswell.
“Chimney repairs are popular this year because there was a lot of rain,” he said. When chimneys start to fall apart, a home can have water damage as water enters through the damaged area, he said.
Water can be the worst attacker of chimneys because of the freeze and thaw cycle, he said. Some of the older homes may have vents from furnaces and water heaters through the chimney. When chimneys fail, flue gases and carbon monoxide can be the result.
Chimney service companies and chimney sweeps also play an important role in fire safety in the home.
“Having a controlled fire in your home is a dangerous thing,” Biswell said.
He said he is frequently asked how often should a homeowner have a fireplace looked at. He then asks the last time it was looked at, and the answer often is “never.” If that’s the case, the fireplace needs to be looked at now, he added.
“If you’ve never had it checked out, not used it, it’s best to start with an inspection,” he said. A certified chimney sweep will run a camera inside the fireplace and chimney, give you a report and show you photos to document it, he said. Then they will give a recommendation and estimate.
Besides working on chimneys and gas stoves, the staff at Fluesbrothers also can clean dryer vents, which can cause more fires than chimneys, and clean gutters.
Chimney sweeps are trained and certified, Biswell said, and Fluesbrothers has the largest Chimney Safety Institute of America-certified staff in the metropolitan Kansas City area. About 15 people work at the business. Biswell is certified as a Master Chimney Sweep by CSIA.
“For us it’s a dangerous job, too,” he said. “We’ve got to do a lot of safety training.”
Chimney sweeps work at heights, and sometimes it’s raining. They train for each situation. “Nobody should get hurt on the job,” he said.
Technology has made chimney sweeps’ jobs safer through the years, he said. Cameras are now used to view the condition of the inside of chimneys. In the future, drones with cameras may be used to get a closer look at different portions of a house, including the chimney and roof, he added.
The road to the top
Biswell said that when he was growing up in Louisburg, Kan., he never imagined that one day he would be a chimney sweep, let alone president of a national organization. After high school, he went to nursing school, where he met his wife, he said. He found it very hard to find a job in the nursing field, so he went to work for Chris Cakes making pancakes.
He began looking at businesses he could start, and chimney sweeping came up as a possibility. There were not many chimney sweep businesses in the Kansas City area, and many were part time, he said. He went to school to get certified, and met some people in Wichita who owned a chimney sweep business, he said.
When he was in Wichita doing a pancake event, he would spend some time riding the truck with the Wichita business owner, learning the business, he added. About 16 years ago he started his chimney sweep business in the Kansas City area.
“I really lucked out on a lot of things, call it an act of God,” Biswell said. “I kept landing with the right place and the right people.”
He eventually got so busy with his small chimney sweep business, operated out of his home then, that he had to quit Chris Cakes, he said.
The business went from being in the garage of his home to a storage unit in the Kansas City, Kan., area, he said. Eventually they rented a place near Woodyard BBQ, then they moved down the street to 1046 Merriam Drive, across from the Boulevard Drive-in, he said.
His wife started working with the business, in the office, and it grew to the point where it was a 3,000-square-foot shop. Now they own their own building at 1701 Southwest Blvd.
“I love KCK,” Biswell said, “it’s why I have the shop here. They’re normal people, good hard-working people, in a great area with a lot of history.”
The business receives a lot of walk-in traffic, he said, from homeowners who want to ask questions, or from contractors who are coming by to buy a chimney cap and install it themselves, he added. He believes having a physical office space helps people feel better about the business.
Good luck
The old saying about good luck from shaking hands with a chimney sweep makes him a popular person.
There’s also a saying that it’s good luck to get a kiss from a chimney sweep at a wedding, and he has been invited to some weddings because of those beliefs, he said.
Traveling to represent chimney sweeps
Eight years ago Biswell got a call from a member of the board of directors of the National Chimney Sweep Guild asking him if he’d like to come to a meeting. It was a good fit and he eventually worked his way up to president of the national association, he said. His wife and other staff members did much of the work at the business while he devoted time to the national association.
As part of his duties as president, he attended a trade convention of chimney sweeps in Italy this year, he said. He was able to see what the industry is like in Europe and was able to do some additional traveling.
In Europe, he said, chimney sweeping is government-regulated, and they don’t just sweep chimneys, Biswell said.
“They do a lot of efficiency testing, to keep the particulates byproducts down,” he said. For example, in Germany, where he attended a convention last year, there are more stringent regulations and a lot more efficient appliances than here, he added. A lot of countries in Europe are dealing with smaller land areas with a need for keeping the particulates down, he added.
Job opportunities in the field
“If you told me as a young man that I’d own, run and probably be one of the industry leaders, I would have laughed and laughed and laughed,” Biswell said. “No, I didn’t even fathom it. It’s amazing where life takes you.”
He said a lot of blue collar trade fields are having problems getting qualified workers now. Many workers are aging out of the system and there is a need to train the next group.
Usually, he has to train workers from the very beginning for his line of work, he noted. Even though the work picks up at certain times of the year, he said he tries to keep employees on a 40-hour week.
Even though he never thought as a child he would want to be a chimney sweep, he likes a lot about it now. He enjoys meeting people, he said.
“I like the independence,” he said. “I like the challenge of problem solving. I like the views. A lot of times, up on the roof, it’s beautiful, you get to see the city from a different angle. Once you become a chimney sweep, you’re always looking up.”
For more information on Fluesbrothers Chimney Sweeps, visit https://www.kcsweep.com/.