ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Sunday, November 24, 1996 TAG: 9611250034
SECTION: CURRENT PAGE: NRV-3 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
DATELINE: PILOT
SOURCE: BOB MORGAN SPECIAL TO THE ROANOKE TIMES
Battling soot and scheduling jobs around chimney swifts has turned out to be a successful career choice for Ron Spencer - once he learned how to ply the ancient trade of chimney sweep.
How did someone from the tiny crossroads of Pilot get into the business?
The nudge for Spencer came from a friend in Pearisburg who told him about a school eight years ago.
"I went to chimney sweeping school - the National Chimney Safety Institute in Greenville, S.C.," Spencer said.
After completing the two-week course, finding work was no problem.
" I put an ad in the newspaper - in the New River Valley Current, actually. Calls started coming in, and business just boomed," said Spencer, who operates as Spencer's Chimney Sweep from his home in Pilot.
The job is a lot different from the days of Charles Dickens' England when dapper but despised master sweeps in stove-pipe hats and black tail-coats employed small boys to go inside the city's chimneys. The famous "climbing boys" seldom survived the ordeal, dying of tuberculosis and cancer.
Spencer is the modern version of a sweep with a complete mobile work-station in his van, with ladders, brushes, drills - and what may be Virginia's largest vacuum cleaner. A bag larger than most freezers balloons out of the rear of his van when his chimney vacuum is in use.
Spencer prefers to attack chimneys from the bottom up, if possible, rather than from the top down. One reason is that he fell 40 feet off a chimney in Catawba some years ago and injured his back. "I felt like an old man for a while," he said, but now all is well.
He has also found that his work can be for the birds. Helping the birds, that is.
"If we find a bird in a chimney, we can't touch it. We have to wait until the bird flies away of its own accord" because of federal endangered species laws that protect nesting birds, said Spencer. "Sometimes, we have to wait all summer."
The birds in most cases are chimney swifts, which nest on vertical surfaces and prefer chimneys. "We wait until the nesting period ends in September," said Spencer.
Fortunately, the chimney sweeping season doesn't start heating up, pardon the expression, until winter is approaching. As fall chill settles in, people begin to think about lighting up the fireplace or the wood stove, and they also begin to think about having the chimneys checked.
As a first step, Spencer comes to the house and makes what he calls an initial "20-point inspection" for $15. He has a reputation for telling people if the chimney is in good shape and no further work is needed. "We could sell a lot of people a complete new chimney if we wanted to," he says. "But we don't do it. Honesty is the best policy."
If the chimney needs a complete cleaning and vacuuming, this can cost $50 to $60, with the initial $15 included in the price. That's where Spencer's well-equipped van comes in handy with its brushes and gargantuan vacuum.
Sometimes, he finds broken chimneys that need relining with stainless steel.
Spencer is a man who appears to love his work - fortunately, the image of chimney sweeps today is far different from that of their 17th-and 18th-century predecessors whose exploitation of the "climbing boys" led the public to regard their work as despicable. The profession's image is also important to Spencer because he has a second job - as an associate pastor of the Bible Truth Tabernacle in Shawsville. His weekend travels for the church carry him as far afield as Alabama and Florida.
For chimney sweeps, technology rather than social reform finally transformed the business in the early l9th century with the development of machine-powered revolving brushes on long poles similar to those Spencer is using today.
The machine-driven revolving brushes used by Spencer employ stainless steel "loops" covering an area inside the chimney that is 21 inches in diameter. The system is good for most chimneys, but chimneys as small as 3 to 6 inches in diameter are too small and probably are out of luck, he says.
As a service to his customers, Spencer provides a brochure with tips on how to avoid the creosote buildup that causes chimney fires; types of fuels to burn and efficient burning techniques; avoiding smoke problems and chimney odors; tips on artificial logs and the use of lighter fluids; what to do if the worst happens and there is a chimney fire.
LENGTH: Medium: 84 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: GENE DALTON\Staff. Chimney sweep Ron Spencer says hisby CNBbusiness has kept growing since he started it eight years ago.
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