Showerthought: I was cleaning a flue in a 1950s ranch house in Boise and realized my brush technique was backwards

I was getting way more dust than usual on a standard 8x13 clay liner, and the homeowner pointed out the soot pattern on their hearth. They said it looked like I was pushing debris down, not up. I'd been using a steady downward pressure for years, thinking it was more controlled. Anyone else have a moment where a customer's simple observation fixed a bad habit?

3 comments

3 Comments

sarah_hart2mo ago

Had a client watch me rewire a ceiling fan once. They asked why I was stripping so much insulation off the wires before twisting them. I was leaving like an inch and a half bare, way more than needed. They were right, it was a fire risk I hadn't even considered.

gavinross22d ago

Shook my head reading that. An inch and a half is a ton of bare wire hanging out there, especially inside a junction box. That's basically asking for a short or something arcing against the metal box. I've seen pics of old ceiling fans where the wiring got hot enough to melt the plastic wire nuts, all because someone got lazy and left way too much exposed. Good on that client for speaking up, could have saved them a house fire down the road.

pat1422mo ago

Man, that's so true. I was cutting tile for a backsplash last year and the homeowner asked why I was scoring it on the back side. I'd been doing it that way forever because my old boss taught me, but it was actually causing more chips on the finished edge. Flipped the tile over and got a perfect cut. Same kind of thing as @sarah_hart's wiring story, just a dumb habit you don't even see until someone points it out.