​Are all of your employees on the same page? Is there a discrepancy in terms or procedures? Does your office staff understand what your chimney technicians are trying to tell them? Does it take a long time to train new employees? These problems can be solved with the Chim-Scan® Factory Training (CSFT) class.

This class/book follows a video scanning and inspection process. Each of the five modules takes the technician from one transition point to the next. It provides an up-close view within the structure.  There is also a 17-page glossary with terms and images. The book includes over 400 photos that explain what you will see in the flue. 

How can your team be aligned if your technicians don’t agree on terms or the procedure? Is this causing confusion with your office staff? If each employee who trains a new technician uses their own terms and unique processes, this confuses the technicians and office support staff! Having streamlined training is essential to having a staff that works together. 
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Do your technicians understand what is happening in the flue? A cracked chimney does not always mean a chimney fire has occurred. A crack may indicate one of these causes: overfiring, chimney fire, or a seismic event. This book focuses in depth on the symptoms to look for other than cracks. There is other evidence to gather, images to capture, and analysis of how this may affect the structure. 

Highlights for the CSFT book and training:
• What is an Ideal Chimney? How does it stand up to IRC and NFPA 211?
• When do I use IRC, NFPA 211, or the appliance manufacturer’s installation instructions?
• Understanding the Levels of Inspection and Chimney Scanning
• Cracks in the flue, Thermal Stress, and Thermal Shock
• Best viewing angles for scanning – the best angle to use by defect for the best images
• The Four Pathways to Deterioration, with examples and images
• Best Access Points for scanning
• What you might find in a chimney (animals, types of soot, etc.).
• Equipment check
• Scanning patterns

Once technicians become familiar with the content in the book, they can take the Chim-Scan® Factory Trained Technician Test to achieve this designation. They will earn a certificate and a patch. A copy of the logo is also available for their use now. This will put them light years ahead of their competition and make them a source of knowledge for homeowners.

I’ve been involved in the chimney industry since the late ‘70s when my wife and I started our chimney sweeping business. Anyone who was a sweep during this time enjoyed a business that boomed during the fall and winter, then fell off in the spring and summer. How times have changed. In these early days, there were no criteria for chimney inspections. Chimney sweeps swept the chimney, maybe noted some issues to the homeowner about the soot level,and left. Litigation and insurance companies started to change the industry and were the basis for developing the industry’s Standard of Care. 
Taking the NFPA 211 Annex and placing it into installation type.
One day, at the turn of the century, as I sat on my deck relaxing, my mind wandered back to the year 1998 when a bunch of guys and I drafted the Levels of Inspections, Degrees of Access, and the list of inspection items in Chapters 14 & 15 and in the NFPA 211 Annex. As I thought about how it would be incorporated into a chimney technician’s inspection, I realized it would be difficult for the technician to try to hit all the inspection items from memory. Additionally, some items would apply to one type of installation, but not all. Today, 25 years later, some chimney technicians are still missing inspection items from NFPA 211. It’s almost as if our industry Standard of Care slipped through our fingers. Is it because there are too many items for a technician to inspect? No, we've become lazy and pick and choose what we want. This led me to begin my 10,000 hours of creating what became the Flue and Hearth Notes™ inspection forms. 
Different Installation Types.
Forty years ago, before NFPA 211’s Inspection criteria, an inspection form was created with a fireplace and a handful of inspection items to check. It was in triplicate form, and chimney sweeps used it for all types of installations. It was used for all chimneys. However, a fireplace inspection differs dramatically from a chimney serving a gas water heater and an oil boiler venting into one flue. Unfortunately, some chimney sweeps and technicians still use these forms.  Twenty years ago, I envisioned building a comprehensive inspection form Based on NFPA 211 but for specific applications such as a Masonry Fireplace, a Prefabricated Fireplace, a Masonry Thimble Chimney Serving an Appliance(s), and a Prefabricated Chimney Serving an Appliance(s).  Although these installations all have chimneys, each chimney vents a different type of heating unit or fireplace. In addition, the fuels can differ: LP gas, natural gas, oil, coal, wood, and pellets.
No installations are the same, but you will see the same types of defects.
Every installation is unique, but the types of defects are the same across the board. For instance, defects can range from vertical and horizontal cracks, protruding mortar joints, stacked liners, and misaligned liners to missing chimney liners.
Start creating a Unity track: Defining what’s important.
One of my all-time favorite stories is one Tom Grandy shared about a trip to the dentist. As with any dental visit, almost everyone gets the lecture about how to floss twice a day, and we are given the same demonstration of how to floss each time we brush. One day, after a lecture on flossing, Tom shared what we all feel, and the dentists regularly hear. “I hate to floss!” I suppose that day, the dentist had heard it for the umpteenth time, and he was ready. He responded, “OK, just do the teeth you want to keep!” This has similarities to our industry. A technician can’t just pick and choose what they want to search for (the insurable cracked flue liner). All inspection items must be investigated (NFPA 211, Chapters 14, 15, and the Annex). I felt pulling all this together would create unity on chimney inspections in our industry since it didn’t seem to be happening.
The start of the Flue and Hearth Notes™ (10,000 hours) of form building and why and how they are built.
I began with the vision of a unified form. I grouped inspection items with installation types. I further included an area for defects related to specific areas, such as a chimney liner. I grouped inspection items per area where they were found in the chimney or fireplace. I included information on appliances. I had professionally created drawings and pulled everything into multiple inspection report forms. Recently, I added more forms to the offering and broke them down by fuels. We now have eight form types: Masonry Fireplace, Masonry Fireplace with a Hearth Stove, Masonry Fireplace with an Insert, Masonry Thimble Chimney Serving a Solid Fuel Appliance, Masonry Thimble Chimney Serving a Liquid Fuel Appliance(s), Prefabricated Chimney Serving a Solid Fuel Appliance, Prefabricated Chimney Serving a Liquid Fuel(s) Appliance, and Prefabricated Fireplace and Chimney. We have Level I and Level II forms for each installation type. That’s 16 forms in total. But then, we went a step further.

It’s here. The time of year that drives your chimney sweeping business – cold weather. Keeping your Chim-Scan® inspection equipment in stable temperatures is essential during these more frigid temperatures. Here are some great tips for weather extremes:
• If the temperatures are near freezing, such as 35°, it is important to store your equipment where temperatures will be warmer and more stable.
• If you accidentally leave the equipment in a freezing environment, please let it warm up in a warm area before use. Extreme temperature changes can cause erratic operation and lead to malfunctions.
• On the other hand, when summer temperatures rise, try to keep this equipment stored at 80° and below. Extreme temperatures, especially on a roof, can damage equipment.
• Take your Chim-Scan® equipment with you at night. Please don’t leave it in the truck. It may get cold (or too hot in the summer) or stolen.
• When you finish the job, please put your equipment in the front of your vehicle when traveling. It usually doesn’t bounce as severely as the back (remember riding in the back of the bus when going to school?) If the equipment is in the front, there’s also less chance of something falling on it.
When winter weather arrives, your Chim-Scan® equipment, laptops, iPads, and cell phones require extra care. Be sure to use extra caution when driving and working. If you have any questions, please get in touch with us. Thank you for your business!
#chimney sweeping, #cold weather care, #chim-scan equipment, #winter weather

​40 years of innovation in Chimney Camera Inspection Systems
Over twenty years ago, Jim Gillam of SNEWs wrote a great article about Estoban Corporation, the manufacturer of Chim-Scan® Chimney Camera Systems for internal chimney inspections. Another article was featured in Blue Collar Magazine in 2021. Now, it is time to bring you up to date in 2024.

Many assume that Estoban's location is in some big glass building with a giant loading dock. This mental image could not be farther from the truth; 99.5% of people driving by Estoban do not even know we are here. We are located outside a small town called Fairfield in southeast Iowa. If you google Fairfield, Iowa, you'll get some fun articles, videos, and even an Oprah visit.
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Estoban isn't a spelling error; it's the combination of Owners' names. E stands for Esther, S stands for Shelley, TO stands for Tom, and BAN stands for Urban. Mom and Pop, who revolutionized the industry, still run the business. Jim's article is a great way to know how Estoban started. So, here's a link to Jim's article; please read it. 

In a brief overview, Tom and Esther started as chimney sweeps in the late '70s; as time passed, Tom's curiosity and concern for his customers' homes got the better of him. Like all sweeps, customers asked him, 'Is the chimney safe?' He couldn't wholeheartedly answer because he knew he didn't see everything.
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Tom started tinkering. He traveled to Cornell University to search the library's optics section of Thomas Registers. A year later, Tom built the Footlocker Camera, which was lovingly named because it was the size of a footlocker with a lens.

In 1984, at the National Chimney Sweep Guild convention in Washington, D.C., Chim-Scan® was shown for the first time to a national audience. CNN News Channel pronounced it a showstopper, and many thought Tom was nuts for sticking a camera in a chimney, but time has shown he's an innovator.

So, in the early 2000s, Chim-Scan® built units that connect to computers, which was AWESOME. Then the World experienced the 'wonderful' (please note sarcasm) jump in Windows Operating systems of XP>Vista>Windows 7>Windows 8> and finally 10. During this jump, they learned the hard way of working with 3rd party parts and programs: one day, they are here, and the next, they're gone.This great inconvenience led them to look for other recording abilities. They have used Polaroid, VHS, Floppy disks, CF burners, PDAs, Computers, DVD recorders, and four versions of SD recorders - all done by 2010.
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Estoban stays current on new technology, but with the rise of disposable technology, they have become even pickier about what they put in their equipment. They only buy and work with commercial electronics, which tend to move slightly slower than consumer electronics. They use Commercial because it has to work day after day, with the option of repair. Shelley explained, "One would never trust a sewer company if they showed up with a teeny tiny camera hooked up to their phone. That stuff is cool and cheap but cannot withstand everyday abuse."
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Back in 2000, when Jim's article came out, Estoban had just added on the schoolroom (where Shelley was homeschooled until high school), a big new office, and the machine room. A total of about 2,000 sq ft: they quickly outgrew that by 2008, they added on Electron row, which now serves as a hallway with 3-D printers, and the 'shipping room,' now the office, added another 800 sq ft. The schoolroom was transformed into Marvin's repair room, bathroom, and commissary. For anyone wondering, Marvin is their oldest employee; he's worked for Estoban for over 30 years, which is why he gets his room. The original shop was now surrounded and became half wiring, half internal highway.

In 2014, we had a record year but at a dreadful cost. From July to January 2015, the company worked seven days a week, sometimes 12 hours a day. This busy schedule was due to disappointing results from high expectations of a cheaper product that came on the market that did not fulfill the vision needs that a Chim-Scan® chimney inspection system can produce. Well, that opened a fantastic door. We heard from people we hadn't spoken to since the mid-'90s, and many jumped on the 'I want to upgrade my old unit' bandwagon.

For those who might not know, Estoban builds Chim-Scan® Units right in Iowa, and we repair, and upgrade units built since 2010. It used to be 1995; however, we had to change to 2010 as new and old technology is a little over 66 units a month, which may sound small, but that number does not include routine repairs or new units, which always work well together. Units were housed in Tom and Esther's front/living room before the busy season repairs came in mid-September. We realized during this time that we needed to expand. As of December 31, we had upgraded over 400 units. When you do that, math bumps the unit number around 800. Eight hundred may seem like a medium-sized number, but to put it into perspective, we don't physically build the monitor, SD recorder, and camera chip. Everything else is built in-house. When you look at a Chim-Scan®, you are looking at a controller that Alicia or Shelley wired, a Case that Tom or other staff built, a reeler that Esther or Therese wired, and a camera that Tom or Shelley built. 

In 2016, the new addition, the backroom, was added. We had a great local team come, and the whole building was constructed, insulated, and concrete poured in 4 days. It was amazing. The Urban Family spent the next two weeks riding bicycles around the 4,000 sq ft addition, waiting for the concrete to cure.
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The new addition starts with a 9-foot ceiling and then jumps to a 16-foot ceiling, allowing us to build a mezzanine. The back half of the 'Backroom' is Tom's Chimney Lab. They have a masonry fireplace, prefab insert, and a masonry thimble chimney; the mezzanine allows roof access to these chimneys just by climbing a set of stairs. Watching their videos, you'll see the Lab; they use it daily to test repairs, new units, and new products. There is also a 14x30 classroom that provides space for training, Zoom meetings, and video presentations.

Tom's favorite tools are his four CNC machines; they have sped up production 100-fold. Parts are constructed in-house for the Chim-Scan® Units. Tom shares these tasks with other employees.

In 2020, Estoban could stay up and running even when other businesses had to close. Tom and Esther literally walk out the door, down a short sidewalk and into the office. Staff was spaced so everyone had their own work area during the pandemic.

As stated before, Estoban also repairs the equipment it builds; this involves the oldest employee, Marvin, who performs most repairs, and Ray, the quality control, shipping, and receiving guy. Every package that comes in gets unpacked and photographed by Ray, who then cleans it within an inch of its life and hands it over to Marvin, who does 80% of the repairs and upgrades. Esther, Alicia, Shelley, and Tom pick up the other 10%. Once a Repair or Upgrade is complete, it gets reviewed, tested, and tested a second time by Ray or whoever is free. It is then cleaned again (as fine soot is worse than glitter to get rid of), photographed, boxed up, and shipped out.

Alicia wires the New Controller/Monitors, and Tom and Steve build the cases for the 211 and make modifications for the 100 Units. Esther or Therese builds the reeler, and Tom or Shelley build the cameras.

Shelley creates CAD drawings and works with 3D printers to create parts for units, which has helped the operation become more efficient.  This frees up the CNC machines to manufacture other parts.

Once new units are complete, they 'sit' for 8 hours, being turned on and off, running for a few minutes to hours, are taken to the Lab, and run up the chimneys to test every part of the unit. They are then photographed, packed, and shipped. You may ask, "What's with all the pictures?" Well, it serves many purposes. The primary objective is that we can see what they're talking about when a customer calls. 

Some may ask, with the listed jobs above, who answers the phone? Shelley and Esther are the voices of Estoban; they cover customer service, sales, and tech support. Shelley is also a webmaster and marketing department.

Estoban also has the benefit of being a pet-friendly workplace. If you stop by for a visit, you receive a greeting from Bella, the Wheaten terrier, and a dismissive glance from Binx, the cat, aka Inspector 13. Bella oversees internal security, employee well-being, and occasional photo shoots. Binx oversees everyone's work, and the rare photoshoot.

Speaking of the past, you may ask, What about the future?
Shelley plans to run Estoban if Tom and Esther ever retire; she will maintain their standard of excellence and keep growing with technology.