BusinessReport.com

Chris Clouatre’s relationship with Mary Poppins is, shall we say, conflicted.

On one hand, the founder and owner of C.C. Chimney Sweep & Duct Cleaning thinks it’s the best Disney movie ever made, has seen it a hundred million times and still watches it whenever he gets a chance.

On the other hand, the image of a besmutted, chimney-sweeping Dick Van Dyke leaving his clients’ homes covered inside and out with black particulate matter makes people nervous—to this day—about having their chimneys cleaned. Never mind that modern technology makes such Victorian-era incidents a thing of the past.

“It’s done more to hurt my business than any competitor that could ever come on the scene, because of the dirty image,” Clouatre says. “‘They’re going to make a mess in my house. They’re going to soot up my carpet. They’re going to have soot and fingerprints all over everything. I’m going to have to have a maid service come in.’”

Yes, Mary Poppins still scares people after all these years. Which is too bad, since creosote-clogged chimneys are responsible for who knows how many chimney fires and destroyed houses every year. So don’t worry. Get your chimney cleaned. Your carpet won’t get dirty.

That said, Clouatre manages to get fabulously sooty himself. It is filthy work, after all, forcing him to wear goggles and a respirator. The soot gets all over him. It gets in the van. Somehow he manages to keep his top hat clean. That’s right: top hat. He’s a chimney sweep, remember? The hat, by the way, is an antique Stetson beaver skin number bequeathed on him by a generous stranger early in Clouatre’s chimney-sweeping career, which began in 1983.

The modern chimney-sweeping industry has its roots in the oil embargo of the mid-1970s, when fuel bills skyrocketed, causing people to rediscover fireplaces, wood stoves and, of course, chimney fires. As Clouatre goes around helping Baton Rougeans prevent catastrophe, his elegant topper is still nearly as indispensable as his August West heavy-duty vacuum system.

“Sometimes they tell me, ‘Hey look, you need to put the hat on before you come in the house.’ I say, ‘Not a problem.’ They’re expecting the hat.”

The duct-cleaning aspect of Clouatre’s business can be a pretty dirty business as well, what with dead animals, mold and such, though he says cleaning dryer vents is worse than chimneys and ducts.

A dryer vent line typically goes up through middle of the house, Clouatre explains, and you can bet it’s full of lint—which is not only dangerous but decreases the efficiency of your dryer. To clean the line, Clouatre hooks it up to the trusty August West. It’s not unheard of for a column of lint and fabric softener residue to shoot straight up into the air like Vesuvius.

“It has a tremendous amount of air flowing through it,” Clouatre says. “I run a four-inch brush all the way down into the vent line. All that lint that’s in that vent line—you can imagine how much lint gets on just the filter in the dryer. You figure you’ve got about 20 or 25 foot of dryer vent line you’re cleaning, and you kind of get an idea of what’s going to be coming out of it. It gets pretty dusty, then it gets all over you. It’s a sight to see.”