As more British residents turn to burning wood to heat their homes this winter, the demand for clean chimneys has brought back a time-honored UK profession: the chimney sweep.
The UK Telegraph reports that the chimney sweeping industry is experiencing the largest boom since Victorian times. (Related: ANALYSIS: We’re going backwards)
“It’s been remarkable,” said Martin Glynn, president of the National Association of Chimney Sweeps. “When we started NACS in 1982, there were just 30 members. Today we have 540 members nationally.”
Recent energy price spikes have added as much as 15 percent to electric bills across the country, the Telegraph reports. In response to the spike, people are turning off their heaters and burning wood fires to stay warm.
This means an unprecedented amount of work for chimney sweeps.
“Every time the gas bill goes up, demand goes up,” said chimney sweep Kyran Ryan. “I’m working 12-13 hours a day at the moment. I don’t physically have time to fit all the customers in.”
Nelson Draper, founder of Drapers Chimney Sweeps, says that business is up 12 percent this winter.
“It would be more,” Draper said. “But I also work for a lot of people who want to have existing gas fires removed and chimneys opened up. I have to wait for a gas-registered engineer to remove the fire before I can start work.”
If you think this is old school chimney sweeping where little boys were sent down the stack to scrub out the grime, guess again. The industry’s rise in the past three years also brought technological breakthroughs such as rotary brushes that spin around in the chimney and high-tech video equipment used to flush out birds’ nests, dead animals and tar buildup.
Energy costs in Britain have skyrocketed in the last decade. Gas prices have risen 190 percent during that time and electricity costs have jumped up 120 percent. There are 4.5 million families in the UK facing “fuel poverty” and more than 24,000 people are expected to die from the cold this winter.
“Britain is still the sixth leading economy in the world and that millions of people are struggling to pay their heating bills is a scandal,” Dr. Benny Peiser, director of the UK’s Global Warming Policy Foundation, told The Daily Caller News Foundation.
“People are dying, about 25,000 to 30,000 every winter as a result of the cold,” Peiser added. “Many hundreds of thousands of people only survive because they stay in bed.”
Follow Michael on Twitter and Facebook
Content created by The Daily Caller News Foundation is available without charge to any eligible news publisher that can provide a large audience. For licensing opportunities of our original content, please contact licensing@dailycallernewsfoundation.org.
All content created by the Daily Caller News Foundation, an independent and nonpartisan newswire service, is available without charge to any legitimate news publisher that can provide a large audience. All republished articles must include our logo, our reporter’s byline and their DCNF affiliation. For any questions about our guidelines or partnering with us, please contact licensing@dailycallernewsfoundation.org.
