Soot bomb went off in a customer's living room in Tacoma

I was doing a routine sweep on a gas fireplace last Tuesday and the damper was stuck worse than I thought, so I gave it a hard tug and the whole plate snapped, dropping a two-foot pile of crusty soot right onto their white carpet. The homeowner just stared at me and said, 'Well, at least it's not the chimney itself,' which made me laugh so hard I almost dropped my brush. Has anyone else had a damper fail mid-sweep, and how do you clean up that mess without making it ten times worse?

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the_elizabeth25d agoMost Upvoted

Heard about a guy in Portland who had the same thing happen and he used a shop vac with a hose attachment to get the big chunks first, then hit the rest with dry cleaning powder before vacuuming again. Worked way better than trying to wipe it down.