Good Neighbor Podcast: Milton & More
Bringing Together Local Businesses & Neighbors of Milton, Crabapple, and Hickory Flat
Good Neighbor Podcast: Milton & More
EP #124: Advanced Chimney Sweeps with Micah Corbett
Ever wondered why the humble chimney, often overlooked as a simple part of our houses, can either be a warm, cozy haven or a ticking time bomb? Join us as we sit down with Micah Corbett of Advanced Chimney Sweeps. Micah, a part of the fourth-generation owners of a business started by a firefighter in the late 1980s, shares not just the history of their work but also the unique challenges and joys of dealing with fireplaces - from scaling high roofs to grappling with soot.
In this riveting chat, Micah elaborates on the critical aspect of fireplace maintenance. He explains the varying aspects of wood-burning and gas fire places, and stresses on the need for annual inspections to prevent potential hazards, like chimney fires caused by creosote soot. Learn from Micah about the absolute importance of fireplace upkeep, and how their family business has been dedicated to ensuring safety and warmth in homes for generations. So, tune in, and allow us to give you a fresh perspective on the significance of chimneys, and the passion behind Advanced Chimney Sweeps.
This is the Good Neighbor podcast, the place where local businesses and neighbors come together. Here's your host, Stacey Polar.
Speaker 2:Hey everybody, we are here with Micah Corbett from Advanced Chimney Suites. Welcome, micah.
Speaker 3:Hi, I'm glad to be here. Thank you, stacey, for having us.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, so we're excited to chat. Why don't you start off by telling us a little bit about your business?
Speaker 3:Yes, so we are Advanced Chimney Suites. We work on really any kind of fireplace, whether that's inspecting them to see the condition of the fireplace. We get in the meaty and greedy of the whether it's wood burning gas, wood stove see if it's worthy of having a fire that year. If there are some issues, we'll recommend some repairs and obviously clean it if it's necessary. Business started in 1980s, late 80s by Norm. He was a firefighter and found just the inspiration to work on fires because, I mean, he was dealing with some of that stuff in his day to day job so fell in love with just working on chimneys. It's kind of crazy to think that you would pick that kind of career dealing with just being on high roofs and dirty soot, but he enjoyed it. And then we are actually the fourth owners and we are currently buying it from our uncle.
Speaker 2:Awesome, awesome. So why don't you talk a little bit about if you've always been doing this or what you were doing before?
Speaker 3:Yeah, so I did get into the business eight years ago. So I've been working now for ourselves but for my uncle majority of the time. But before chimneys sweeping I own the business with my twin brother and so we've always talked about being twins. We were very some twins are not as close but we were always pretty close and always wanted to work together in the future. But we did go to different colleges at the time and so we just never thought that was ever going to happen.
Speaker 3:But my uncle at the time offered me the chimneys sweet position and at the time I just personally love to work for people to try to help them out. Whether that was at the time I loved athletics, I wanted to do sports medicine and then it led towards going to Georgia to work for my uncle and at the time didn't know if I wanted to do chimneys sweeping the rest of my life. So I was looking into other avenues, firefighting being one of them. Both my twin brother and I we have a faith, so we believe in just being good stewards of our work, helping out others, having a serving heart, and so just found that, believe it or not, doing chimneys, walking in the door and just getting to know our customers and trying to help them out as best as we can, so they can be excited to see us the following year telling us all about their great experiences from burning.
Speaker 2:So awesome. Can you talk a little bit about you? Know how what you're doing can prevent fires and really help keep folks safe.
Speaker 3:Yeah, so you know it really depends on the fireplace that you have and you have to know what they're doing. So wood burning is a little more maintenance involved than gas. But I would recommend every year having an inspection done. Not everyone needs to have an inspection done, but if you've never had one we do recommend getting us out and we can kind of walk you through what you could expect whether that's every year or every other year. But yeah, it is important to check out your fireplace because Korea Soot, which is the black byproduct of burning wood, or vented gas, carbon dioxide.
Speaker 3:You do even get creosil buildup from that. But that can catch in your chimney and cause chimney fires which are 2,000 degrees or plus. It's pretty intense. But there is statistically, I think 25,000 fires in the US a year chimney fires and sometimes people don't actually even know they have one until it's really bad. So sometimes a fireplace will actually contain the chimney fire. But what happens is the integrity of your fireplace whether it's a prefab, like factory built fireplace pipe, or whether it's like terracotta flue tiles or like a masonry chimney that has mortar and stuff in them. It can be integrity of the mortar, and tiles or the pipe get weakened and damaged. So sometimes people don't even know until that second chimney fire hits and then you've got some damage to the home. So it is always important to get that checked out.
Speaker 2:And then that's really important.
Speaker 3:There is other important things with fireplaces as well, like water prevention and some like energy efficiency. With air, bad drafting or worst case scenarios like birds and animals getting in the house as well, that can be a pretty exciting day.
Speaker 2:Good point, good point. Can you talk about some of the challenges that you and your brother Pat's has taken over the business and how you're working through those?
Speaker 3:Yeah. So we are both definitely introverts and never thought that we would really ever own a business together, let alone have people under us. So we are always growing in being a leader in those roles and I think we have grown in those aspects. There was obviously COVID. We purchased the company, signed all the paperwork in 2020, which is a great year to buy a business, especially with COVID happening so it was a little hard to navigate. We weren't getting a ton of work. We wanted to make sure we followed the guidelines that the government put in place, so we weren't getting a ton of work for a good three to six months. A lot of it was exterior work, which is a good portion of our job, but a lot of it is inside too. So just trying to navigate that not getting. We were able to get financial aid from the government, which definitely helped, but making sure that our police were getting paid and just make sure we were still getting a bunch of calls in was definitely tough.
Speaker 2:But you're still here, which is great, yes, so what do you like to do for fun when you're not working?
Speaker 3:For fun, yeah, so we love. In the back of me I've got some rock climbing gear hanging up. So we do love the outdoors and in our job we do climb roofs and I'm not sure if this was like climbing roofs inspired us to go rock climb or what that was, but we do enjoy rock climbing, whether that's indoor or outdoor. We'll do probably two trips a year, my brother and I together, going rock climbing outdoors, and my wife and I my brother is married as well we love the outdoors, so my wife and I will actually go two to three national parks a year. We'll do some camping, hiking, whatever the national park provides. We do love the outdoors. So I would say that's primarily what we like to do is travel and do some rock climbing.
Speaker 2:Awesome. Well, that sounds like a lot of fun. Can you talk about anything else that you want our listeners to know about your business that you haven't had a chance to share?
Speaker 3:Yeah, I think a couple of things we hear a lot from customers or the community that does burn. Just to clear up, some people will actually say, oh, back in the day they actually controlled fires so they would actually cause chimney fires.
Speaker 3:And even today some people are like, oh, chimney fire happened, but that's OK because it cleans my chimney which it does burn all that creoset up, but what a lot of people don't know is the damage it does to the fireplace. So chimney fires are bad. Even though it does clean your chimney, you do need to get the piping or the mortar and tiles checked out because it does do some damage and so that again that next incident or it could do damage where you leak heat and smoke and stuff like that. That's probably one of the more things that we hear from our customers. They don't think chimney fires are as bad.
Speaker 3:Another one would be gas logs. Gas logs are low maintenance but a lot of times people don't ever check their chimney, even if they have gas logs, because there's a preconceived notion that you don't build up anything, it's just gas and heat. But you actually do produce a little amount of creoset, and so people will go 15, 20 years without getting the fireplace cleaned and then have a chimney fire and so yeah, gas fireplace is definitely done as well.
Speaker 2:Awesome, that makes sense. Where can folks find you? Can you share your contact info with us?
Speaker 3:Yes, you can contact us on social media. We're working on that, but we do have a Facebook account, so you can look us up on Facebook and then our number is 770-841-2681. And you can find us our email. Our office lady is really good at looking at the emails that come in. If you have any questions or want to get on the schedule, our email is advanced with a D At the end chimney, sorry, inccom.
Speaker 2:Well, thank you so much for joining us today, Mike and we appreciate you.
Speaker 3:Yeah, we appreciate you guys and all you guys do Awesome.
Speaker 1:Thank you for listening to the Good Neighbor podcast Milton and Mort. To nominate your favorite local businesses to be featured on the show, go to GNPMiltoncom. That's GNPMiltoncom. Or call 470-664-4930. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. They did my chair, reminding me throughout the 90's what