S4U Chimney Typhoon Power Sweeping Rod Bag with LED Pen Torch

Hi. I bought this about six years ago on Amazon and I’ve used it several times in three different houses, eight if you count neighbours. I may be tempting fate but, when used with my makita 18v drill it has never let me down. The rods are very flexible and although the brush looks a bit bare and scabby it does does an excellent job removing soot and,of course, you get to sweep up and down as you remove the rods.My chimneys have been five, seven and ten metres (rods). I did a neighbours at twelve and it was spotless when finished.Only four stars?….you’ll see from the description the rods clip together as you push the brush up the chimney and unclip as you descend. Simples!! However on occasions, I’ve found the little recessed clips that hold the rods together sometimes stick. Not the end of the world and can be dealt with quickly with a dry lube ( not wd40 cos it’s wet and attracts soot) but frustrating when it happens especially if your sitting with a pile of soot at your feet. It takes minimal practice to get the hang of it and and it’s very simple to use. Just duct tape cardboard over your fire opening cut a slot for the rods, have your henry handy (with a new bag) and make sure your drills charged.

After pricing up a chimney sweep I decided to do it myself and researched this set up.First go at doing anything like this and have to say fantastic results and took less than an hour to do.I've added a before and after pics of the chimney to demonstrate how clean it was after using this set up.

got this to clean, my log burner flu liner did a great job, I pushed it up section by section till at the top making sure not to go too far and push the chimney cap off, then taped the plastic sheet onto the log burner to prevent soot from coming into the room, then put a small hole in it for the rod to go through and attached the drill. run the drill as I pulled each section down , then took a section out one at a time till it was all the way down, make sure you have told blanket to put the rods on as you take them out as they have soot on, I let the dust settle and took the plastic sheet off, couldn't believe how much soot was in the burner, the underneath where the ashes go was full and so was the top where the logs go, cleared it out job done with no mess great .

This is the first time I have attempted to clean the chimney on my wood burner. Before you start it is really important to understand how to access your chimney, on my stove it involved removing the heavy metal baffle. Before this comes out the three fire bricks need removing. I also removed the door for ease of access. Sounds complicated but only took a few minutes, plenty of on line instructions. The brush arrived swiftly and was well packaged. I fitted all the rods together and all joints were good. Instructions were clear. The kit comes with a large piece of plastic to tape to your stove to prevent soot. There was enough for at least six sweeps. I used tape to reenforce the hole where the brush pokes through. This is ideally a two person job, you could do it by yourself but it is a lot easier if one supports the rods and drill while the other presses the release catch on the rods. I have two batteries on my drill but found that one was enough. The kit seemed to sweep well, I swept in one direction on way up and the other on way down. Collected a tray of soot. No soot in the room. Look forward to using it next year.

I used this item twice and all went well, however when I used it last week, the top part got stuck right up my chimney. I realised later that there was a birds nest in the flue liner. The brush head got stuck in this and the connector came loose. I asked my roofer to have a look as the chimney sweeps want about £250 to get the pole and nest out. The roofer said if I had bought a rod system that screws rather than clips, it would not have come apart. I don't recommend buying this item as I am facing a hefty bill to make my chimney usable. If I had paid £60 to a chimney sweep and he faced a nest, he would have still had to get his rods out. I wish I had paid the professionals!

Would be 5 stars if they all worked straight out of the box, but the holes all need de-burring. Basically you need to just very quickly run a small round file in the holes to get bits left in the manufacturing that get in the way of the spring loaded nipples. If they don’t fully pop through the tubes can pop apart inside the chimney which would be bad.

I would have given this 5 stars after the first use.... On the second sweep I was putting together the rods and thought to myself "it would be really bad if this came apart in the flue". So I made sure it was well connected. And then it came apart on the sweep! I couldn't reach it with my arm, but was fortunate enough to have more rods left over than there were stuck in the chimney. So I managed to hook out the top of the brush with the homemade grapple (see picture), made out of a wire coat hanger, gaffer taped to the remaining rods. I tried just the single end of the coat hanger first but was ineffective, so had to make three hooks. And as another review has suggested, gaffer taped all the joints.In summary, notes for the:- Designer: needs a more positive locking mechanism between the rods- User: gaffer tape the joints to mitigate disaster, and buy a lot more rods than the length of the chimney!

I checked very carefully that these were all done up properly when going up the chimney, unfortunately 4 rods and the head somehow detached and got stuck half way up. After putting the gopro up there, I could see where they were stuck. I fashioned a hook as per the photograph and managed to rotate the hook, grab the rods and pull them out. Hope this is of use to anyone else that has a similar problem. I'd recommend ductaping the joints to avoid a night of cursing.... They did do a fairly good job though and very easy to use.