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Saw a guy in Richmond reline a flue with a leaf blower and a homemade foam rig, got me rethinking my whole setup
I was doing a job in Richmond, Virginia two weeks back on an old brick house from the 1920s, and the homeowner hired a second sweep to handle a liner install while I did the firebox. I stuck around to watch because I am nosy like that. This guy shows up with a 6 inch PVC pipe, a shop vac hose taped to a foam cannon, and a leaf blower he rigged with a reducer. He slid a brush down on a rod, blew foam pellets through the pipe to coat the walls, then ran the liner with two guys hauling rope while the blower pushed air behind it to keep it from snagging on the corbel. Whole thing took him 40 minutes on a 32 foot flue, and I usually burn an hour and a half fighting the same run with a rope and a cone. My boss back in the day would have called it a hack, but the liner came out clean and he pressure tested it right there with a smoke bomb. Made me wonder how much of my routine is just what I was taught and not what actually works. Any of you tried pushing a liner with air instead of pulling it? Curious if that foam trick holds up on a clay flue that is already cracked up top.
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