I finally gave up on wire brushes for clay flues after 6 years

I spent 4 hours at a house in Akron trying to get a wire brush past a ledge in a clay tile flue, and the homeowner kept coming out to ask if everything was okay. A guy I met at the supply counter said use a poly brush with flexible rods on old clay, and it cleared the whole run in 20 minutes with no chipped tile. Am I the only one who held onto wire for too long on soft flues, or did somebody else make the switch late too?

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joelwells18d ago

Did you deal with that sinking feeling too when the wire brush just would not budge? I ran wire on clay for way too long, probably 4 or 5 years, and kept telling myself the tile was tougher than it looked. Then I chipped the edge on a job in Canton and had to explain it to the homeowner, which was a bad day. Switching to poly felt like giving up at first but the tile stays whole and the job gets done faster.

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