Do-it-yourself chimney brush: manufacturing guide

The steam room in the bathhouse and the heater require special attention.
The healing effect and softness of the steam depends on its type and quality. The expected effect depends on the correct choice of stone and full filling of the heater. Professionals know exactly what effect a heated mineral has on people when interacting with water. Below we will try to understand in more detail how to choose stones for a bath and how best to use them. And what’s most interesting is what stones for a bath can be collected completely free of charge in your area. Beginners will find it extremely useful, and professionals may pick up a couple of interesting ideas.

How much can you earn from this?

To grow high-quality raw materials, it is necessary to follow the agricultural techniques for growing sorghum. Thickened plantings will produce thin twigs that are not suitable for knitting: they will break when pulled with wire or the bark of a young tree. For high-quality brooms with a thin handle and a fluffy base, you need to choose varieties of millet of the spreading group.

Sorghum is sown in the first half of May, when the ground is still wet. 15-20 cm are left between plants; row spacing should allow free passage in order to promptly weed seedlings and remove weeds (this is about 35 cm). Sow to a depth of 4-5 centimeters. With this method of planting, one hundred square meters of land produces raw materials for the production of 25-30 ready-made lush brooms. To make the twigs flexible and not break, they are steamed in salt water before binding. Sorghum is harvested in September, and mating begins in free time, when the main crop is harvested in the fields.

They are usually knitted from three parts-bundles, connecting them into a common one. To do this, use main wire or bast strips cut from young tree branches. The quality and durability of the product depends on the strength of the ligaments. Here you should try to ensure that buyers come back next season.

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Features of selling brooms

?The quality of brooms is undoubtedly a decisive factor. But we must not forget about other production features. Even at the moment of collecting raw materials, you need to think about who to sell your goods to. The main consumers will be:

• city ​​bath complexes;
• saunas;
• health centers;
• tourist resorts for recreation;
• owners of cottages and private houses.

You need to work with such clients in a targeted manner, offering your services. If you can’t attract consumers, you can sell brooms at the city market or on the highway.

The most effective ways of promotion will be:

1. placing advertisements on special boards on the Internet and in local newspapers;
2. word of mouth (rumors will spread very quickly if the quality of the brooms is really good);
3. mailing list and creating your own website (suitable for serious businessmen with large production volumes).

What are floor brooms made of?

Throughout its centuries-old history, the broom has remained virtually unchanged in appearance - only the materials from which it is made have changed. You can make this cleaning device out of almost anything. Basically, brooms are made from stems and branches of bushes and herbs, and twigs. Most often they are created from a special plant - sorghum, but we will talk about it a little lower.

One of the modern broom options

Brooms are also knitted from common wolfberry, a shrub popularly called “wolf berry.” By the way, this is the plant that produces the popular goji berries. But a soft broom can be made from St. John's wort, wormwood, and oregano. If you sweep the floor with such a product, the house will smell fragrant, and moths and other insects will not appear. Spiders could be expelled from a home by sweeping it with a broom made of reed stems. In villages they still use brooms made from nettles and linden branches.

The Slavs often used millet stems to create brooms. But now such products have practically sunk into oblivion - they have been replaced by softer brooms made from broom sorghum.

You can even make good money making brooms

Make it yourself or buy it

This question invariably faces owners of property heated with coal or wood. If you have the skills to handle household tools, making a brush will not be difficult.

But this will require spending time, which everyone is sorely lacking. It is much easier to purchase a finished product from a factory. Fortunately, today retail stores offer a wide range of similar products, and their prices are quite reasonable.

Tips for choosing

When purchasing chimney cleaning devices, you should not focus on their cost. A cheap purchase may not be effective and will sit in the pantry for years.

The following factors need to be taken into account:

• brick channels can be processed with any material;
• To clean ceramic pipes, only a plastic brush may be used;
• steel chimneys can be cleaned with heads with bristles made of copper or brass;

The most popular brushes are from the following manufacturers:

1. PCC (Poland) - plastic and metal, with a diameter of 120-400 mm;
2. Hansa (Lithuania) - universal 150-400 mm;
3. Chimney sweep (Russia) - a set with replaceable nozzles.

Triple knitting

The method in which an additional belt is made in the middle - between the main upper and lower ones - is used in the case when the broom handle is quite thick and needs to be reduced in diameter. Thus, this is a simple tightening harness performed with a regular knot.

Sometimes they completely wrap the broom handle. Its knitting begins, as usual, with a simple tightening harness, and then turns are evenly applied along the entire length of the handle. Thanks to this winding, the broom fits very firmly and comfortably in your hand, and the likelihood of getting hurt is minimized. This method also gives some advantage in that you don’t have to remove the foliage from the branches in the area of ​​the handle. Full winding will be indispensable in the manufacture of coniferous brooms. However, it should be taken into account that if such a broom is prepared for future use, the turns of the winding material should not be applied too tightly to each other in order to avoid molding of branches and leaves (if they are not removed) under the winding.

Separately, it is worth mentioning the materials for tying bath brooms. Without a doubt, natural linen or hemp twine is considered the best, but nowadays their synthetic analogues, which are more durable and cheaper, are often used. Many sauna lovers use plastic electrical clamps to tie brooms, eliminating the need to tie knots and allowing, if necessary, to easily and quickly tighten them.

When is it necessary to clean the chimney?

Regardless of the material and design of the chimney, it is impossible to completely avoid cleaning. During operation, the internal surface gradually becomes overgrown with soot and narrows, which threatens the occurrence of a reverse draft effect, when smoke partially or completely enters the room, posing a threat to the health and life of people inside.

When deciding whether cleaning is necessary, it is worth considering a number of factors:

• When was the last time it was cleaned?
• How long has the chimney been in use?
• What material are the chimney pipes made of?
• What fuel is used to operate the stove, how often is household waste and raw wood burned?
• How often the firebox is made with firewood from coniferous trees.

The following signs will help you understand that cleaning is necessary:

• The smoke coming from the chimney is not white or transparent, but dark, containing a high concentration of soot.
• Flame color. Normally, the flames are light orange in color, and the wood crackles cheerfully as it burns. If the chimney is clogged with soot, the flame is darker and the burning intensity is significantly lower.

Still, the surest way to determine a blockage is a visual inspection. Professionals use for these purposes a load selected in accordance with the diameter of the pipe and attached to a cable. If the load moves up and down easily - the chimney is in order, it rests and gets stuck - it’s time to clean it.

The areas where the chimney duct turns and where it narrows are most susceptible to soot accumulation.

Note! To simplify the future cleaning procedure as much as possible, it is worthwhile to provide for the installation of inspection holes in the chimney, even at the design stage.

Risks and disadvantages of business

Producing and selling bath brooms is a business suitable for beginners and those who do not have sufficient capital to invest in their own business. Sooner or later, all products will be sold, and the costs will be recouped, so the business involves minimal risks.

Minuses:

• labor-intensive, monotonous work;
• seasonality - harvesting is possible only in the warm months;
• It is necessary to monitor the temperature in the room where the brooms are dried.

The advantage of such a business remains full payback and the ability to not depend on creditors. Earnings are built on hard work and customers’ love for a healthy lifestyle.

Comments

I can tie up to a hundred pieces in 6-7 hours without machines. And you’re great, it’s just the thing for you leisurely!

Galim Muratov

@Tamara Gorbunova I wanted to start selling. There is a city of 60 thousand people. And 30 thousand village. How do you manage to sell for a good price? Please share your experience.

Wild Bee

Where is the machine? The most important thing is to connect, and dialing is the tenth thing. Dislike!

The method of knitting a bath broom is an important point that affects the convenience and safety of using the broom during steam procedures, and also ensures its strength and stability of shape during preparation and storage. Depending on the type of broom and its purpose, the methods may differ significantly.

Business concept

Visiting the bathhouse has become an extremely fashionable activity. People pay more attention to health, resorting to the experience of their ancestors. Earnings from the sale of bath brooms are based on the sale of simple, but correctly made bundles of birch and oak branches. Oak brooms are more valuable, although making products from this type of wood is easier.

Clients will be:

• bath complexes, saunas;
• city ​​baths;
• private buyers.

You can do the preparation of brooms yourself, or you can hire staff consisting of rural residents. To hire employees, you will need start-up capital, but in the absence of free finance, you must take on all the work yourself.

Double knitting

With it, two strapping belts are made; it is the most traditional and universal. It provides very high strength to the broom and allows you to make a handle that is rigid and easy to grip. A special feature of double knitting is the use of the so-called cross broom knitting method and the use of different knots for the upper and lower belt.

With the cross method, the bottom strap is performed first.

There are two ways to do it:

In the first option, the branches collected in a bundle are tied closer to the end with a strong cord, thread or twine, but so that the tie is not too tight. After this, the beam is divided in half and these halves are rotated relative to each other by 360 degrees.

In this way, the strapping self-tightens, and it will securely hold the branches. The operation requires some physical effort

It is important that the first tie is not too tight, otherwise you will either not be able to twist the halves of the bundle, or you will break the branches

The second method is that the branches collected in a bundle are immediately divided in half, and these two parts are crossed over each other at an angle of 90 degrees, after which a harness is applied and then the halves are twisted until they are connected into a single bundle.

The top binding is made with a simple tightening knot, as in the case of the simple single knitting described at the very beginning. It is also necessary for additional subsequent tightening when the broom dries out. In some cases, for the top dressing, a special wedging technique is used, in which, after several turns, the ends of the twine are passed through the bundle and the turns are applied again. Wedging dressing significantly increases the strength of the broom, but does not provide the possibility of additional tightening. The cross method is very good for knitting reusable brooms (for example, oak or birch). It is impossible to break such a broom even with the most intense steaming.

However, double knitting of a broom can be done in a simple way (as in the case of single knitting, see above). In this case, both strapping belts are made with a regular tightening knot, and the sequence of applying the belts is not of fundamental importance.

Why does the chimney become overgrown with soot?

The combustion process of fuel is an oxidation process, and this requires oxygen and high temperature. If at least one of these conditions is not met, soot appears - this is the result of insufficient oxidation of carbon. Externally, the presence of soot can be determined by the color of the smoke - if it is black, it means it contains soot particles, but most of it settles in the chimney, especially in places of turns.

Now a little about what can cause active soot formation:

Damp firewood. If you put undried wood on the fire, it will dry out first. This takes a lot of energy, which greatly reduces the temperature in the firebox. We get underheated carbon, a large cloud of black smoke and, after some time of using raw fuel, we will have a clogged chimney.

Using damp firewood leads to the accumulation of soot deposits

The rate at which the chimney becomes overgrown with soot also depends on the type of firewood. Resinous spruce and pine are not the best choice in this regard, but not everyone has the opportunity to burn with expensive oak or other hardwoods. In any case, you can make sure that the firewood is dry. To do this, it is worth building a larger firewood shed so that it can accommodate a supply for 2-3 years. Then you can use the most seasoned and dried logs, and let the fresh ones lie and reach condition.

Knitting and production equipment

Next comes knitting and production of finished products from raw materials. It is worth noting that the production of brooms can be either manual or mechanized. In the first case, you will have to hire labor. As practice shows, one worker can knit about 15 brooms in a day.

However, large enterprises have long entrusted this task to specialized equipment. Machines for knitting brooms are capable of producing up to 15 brooms per hour, that is, up to 120-150 units of the finished product are produced per day. The cost of such instruments is about 300 thousand rubles.

The machines operate on a 220 Volt network, so the warehouse you rent must be connected to the power grid.

In folk medicine

Various medicinal properties are attributed to various brooms:

• Birch
  broom helps with pain, aches in muscles and joints after exercise and physical activity, cleanses the skin well when prone to rashes and pustules, accelerates the healing of wounds and abrasions, has a calming effect, and improves mood. Its special advantage is the strong expansion of a pair of small bronchi in the coronary. This promotes the removal of sputum and improves ventilation of the lungs. Indispensable for asthmatics and experienced smokers. Birch leaves contain essential oils, tannins, vitamin C, provitamin A. After the parka, the skin will be smooth, elastic, and a pleasant color. The infusion of a broom at the end of the bath is beneficial for the scalp: it strengthens the hair and destroys dandruff.
• An oak
  broom is more suitable for people with oily skin. It makes it matte and elastic, and has a strong anti-inflammatory effect. The aroma of oak prevents excessive increases in blood pressure in the steam room. Oak leaves contain a large amount of tannins. Oak decoction is used as a remedy for certain skin diseases and sweating of the feet. Calms the nervous system after intense physical and mental exercise.
• Linden
  broom perfectly eliminates headaches, has a diuretic effect with a mild effect on the kidneys, accelerates sweating, has a calming, wound-healing, bronchodilator, antipyretic effect.
• Alder
  broom is used for colds, aching joints and muscles.
• Fir
  broom is used in winter in Siberia, and
  juniper broom
  is used in Central Asia. The resinous substances of plants irritate the skin, stimulate sweating, increase blood circulation deep in the muscles and, reflexively, even in the internal organs. This broom is good for a kind of massage. For example, for pain in the spine, neuralgia, radiculitis. It perfectly disinfects the air and prevents respiratory diseases.
• The pine
  broom should be steamed for 10 minutes in boiling water. As soon as it becomes soft, you can start steaming. It is useful to add one or two coniferous branches to a birch or oak broom. The infusion of such a broom can be used for watering stones and for washing.

Fir, spruce and juniper brooms cannot be harvested for future use. After drying, the needles fall off. Use fresh!

• Eucalyptus
  broom - most often used in the Caucasus. Eucalyptus leaves contain from 1 to 3 percent essential oil, which is associated with its medicinal properties. It is especially good for a runny nose and sore throat. In the steam room, they press it to the face and breathe through their nose for 4-5 minutes. But it also has disadvantages: the branches of the eucalyptus broom are too thin and flexible, and the leaves are long. They are difficult to “control” while quilting.
• Morning brooms made from rowan
  and
  tansy
  enhance the processes of excitation in the nervous system - they eliminate the relaxing effect of the bath procedure, prepare the body well for work and therefore are successfully used in the first half of the day.
• Nettle
  broom is used for aching and pain in the joints, muscles or lower back after physical activity. It has a powerful local irritating, distracting, anti-inflammatory effect. Nettle broom is a good remedy for the treatment of radiculitis, rheumatism, and gout. With its regular use, blood pressure decreases and nervous tension is relieved. However, with strong whipping, it quickly frays and becomes unusable. Dip such a broom into hot water for just a few seconds. Steam only after warming up the body, with light strokes. Nettle is a remedy for rehabilitation after fractures, sprains, bruises, hematomas, etc., due to its burning properties, it provokes massage of sore spots.

• Good brooms made of maple
  ,
  walnut
  ,
  ash
  ,
  elm
  .
  A broom made from young cherry
  cut at the beginning of summer is very pleasant. This broom is soft and has a good cherry aroma. You can add bunches of medicinal, aromatic and any herbs to the brooms. In summer, entirely herbal brooms are used, including for rubbing. During the season, it is, of course, better to use fresh brooms - these are the ones that contain a lot of essential oils and phytoncides.
• Combined brooms
  are a bunch of branches of different trees, shrubs, and herbs. They are made to combine different qualities or impart new ones - aromatic compositions, organoleptic properties.

Arrangement

For different stones and different stoves, you can find different recommendations for laying stones.

The general instructions look like this:

• We place large stones at the bottom.

Tip: Before installation, the stones must be washed under strong water pressure without adding chemical cleaners. This eliminates possible odor and tiny particles that would get into the air when heated.

• We place smaller samples in the next layer, maintaining gaps for water flow and steam escape.
• We close the top again with large “nuds”.

Example of stacked stones

You can calculate in advance how many stones are needed for the bath. Although their number is, first of all, greatly influenced by the specifics of the selected breed, there is still an average value. So, 2.2 kg of “pebbles” should be placed per cubic meter.

Sales market

The hardest part of making brooms is finding buyers who will be interested in buying such large quantities of goods. After all, you can sell such a large number of brooms at retail forever. In this regard, even during weeding and harvesting sorghum, you need to find wholesalers who will buy your products in whole quantities. Otherwise, the entire warehouse will be overflowing with unsold brooms, and the business will lose money.

That is why in the price category we have reduced the price of products by more than 3 times. If you don’t do this, then in pursuit of big money you will be left without profit. Therefore, as they say, a bird in the hand is better than a pie in the sky (especially since the annual net profit even with 60-ruble brooms will be several hundred thousand rubles, and sometimes a million).

Chimney brush: how to make a chimney sweep tool with your own hands

Stove heating not only does not lose ground, but is also experiencing its rebirth. For this reason, issues of proper operation and maintenance of solid fuel units are no less pressing than they were several centuries ago. Owners of private households do not have any difficulties with how to light a stove and what kind of firewood is best to use. Problems begin when the draft disappears and smoke begins to flow into the room. And the whole reason is a smoke duct clogged with soot and soot. It is difficult to find a chimney sweep today, so you will have to carry out the maintenance of the chimney yourself. All you need for this is a chimney brush, which you can make yourself.

About household equipment

For sowing and harvesting, of course, you need at least one piece of equipment. Yes, for such a business as the production of brooms, there is no point in purchasing an expensive tractor. A more reasonable solution would be to rent it, and together with the employee.

Almost every small village has its own farm. You ask: “What does it have to do with brooms?” The answer is very simple - instead of buying special equipment for your own fleet, you can borrow it from a local farmer. At the same time, you need to take care of the work team. It can also be assembled in a short time, because the work will not take place all year round, but seasonally.

By the way, if this is the production of plastic brooms, you won't even have to grow sorghum. But you can’t get by with just one machine. The raw materials for their production will have to be purchased from larger manufacturers, and this is much more expensive than growing your own raw materials.

Sorghum broom - how to tie a sorghum broom | Eco bath

Everyone in the house, in addition to a new invention, such as a vacuum cleaner or a broom, also has an irreplaceable one in the household - a sorghum broom. Major cleaning is not always required, so with its help you can sweep the apartment quickly and without much difficulty. We don’t change them very often, since most often it is capitally made and there is no need to buy it often.

Growing sorghum for broom

But still, those who live in a suburban house or have their own plot can try growing sorghum, the plant from which broom is made. Since the plant ripens in the fall, it should be planted in the spring. The seeds are soaked in water, the unusable grains float to the surface and are thrown away. Then they are planted (May), and in August the stems grow about 2 meters, they are mowed and left to dry in the sun, soon it will be a broom. Afterwards, the sorghum is cleared of leaves and seeds. View other information about bath brooms here.

How to knit a sorghum broom

Let's move on to how to knit a broom from sorghum. For greater convenience, we will show you in the form of a list of actions.

1. To begin with, we make a U-shaped device 2-3 meters long.

2. We tie bunches of sorghum in the form of panicles.

3. We tie a strong thread to the crossbar of the arch, and at the base there is a piece of wood for weighting, on which we stand when tying the so-called “dolls”, soon it will be a broom.

You will also need ribbons of brushwood (thin ribbons are cut with a knife), and in order to make them more elastic, we soak them in water and dry them slightly. And they are needed to use them and threads to pull together the bunches into the future sorghum broom. More about bath brooms here.

4. After all the preparations, take 8-9 stalks of sorghum and combine the panicles with each other, intertwining them with a brushwood ribbon.

5. Then apply the panicles horizontally relative to the arch and rotate them around the axis. In order to tighten the thread, we step on the board, thereby making a “pupa”. And lastly, we form a broom. We take three “dolls” and tie them in three places. For tying we use nylon threads. We place a ribbon of brushwood in place of the first tie at the base of the three bundles, bring the “pupa” to the threads and tighten it by turning it around an axis. Then, at a distance of 15 cm from the first puff, we make a second one, and so on. We cut off the ends of the ribbons, cut off the handle of the product at a distance of 5 cm from the place of the last tightening. That's it, the sorghum broom is ready!

Making sorghum brooms may seem difficult, but try it once and you will have only a product from your own manufacturer in your house!

Bath brooms for baths find out more.

Stones for the heater

To fill the heater you need to use a variety of types of minerals. It doesn't matter whether you like them or not. Each of them has individual characteristics and unique properties. All stones for sauna stoves have their own unique feature.

Heat resistance. The mineral should not react to high temperature and temperature fluctuations.

They have to withstand heavy loads. They are first heated until the temperature reaches its maximum value. Then the stones are watered. The result is uneven cooling.

Not every mineral can withstand such tests. With a high value of the heat resistance coefficient, the mineral very rarely cracks, chipping is excluded.

Density. How high the density is can be easily checked using an ordinary hammer. You just need to hit its surface. The second option would be a hot stone doused with cold water. If after such tests it remains intact, then we can talk about its high quality. If a crack appears on the surface, it means that the heat resistance of the mineral is low.

Heat capacity. The ability of the mineral to store heat for a long period of time depends on this indicator. Bath attendants require that the stone heats up quickly and releases heat for a very long time.

Typically, such minerals are heavy and have a uniform structure. When the density is high and the rock is homogeneous, the effect of the steam room can be quite large. Such minerals warm up quickly. Their cooling continues for hours. They can easily withstand temperature changes.

Dimensions. When making a choice, you must always remember that the installed stove works well only with certain dimensions. Therefore, when choosing the right mineral, in addition to the aesthetic approach, you need to take into account the practical component. In wood-burning stoves, it is better to use stones with dimensions of 7–15 cm. Electric stoves will work perfectly with smaller minerals: 5–7 cm.

Environmental requirements. When the stone becomes very hot, it is possible to release toxic substances that can be harmful to human health. To prevent this from happening, you need to select only breeds specifically designed for use in the bathhouse.

The appearance of the mineral plays an important role. You definitely need to pay attention to this. The surface must be absolutely smooth and free from any inclusions or traces of impurities. This material is of high quality. They are completely safe for others.

If traces of mica are visible on the surface, combined with another rock, when heated, splitting and release of harmful substances is possible.

Juniper broom

Juniper broom has a rich composition of essential oils, which helps with rheumatic diseases, gout, swelling and some skin diseases. The aroma of juniper also helps well with inflammatory processes in the upper respiratory tract. However, such a broom is hard and prickly, so not all bath lovers can use it as a broom. However, experts on the medicinal properties of juniper get out of the situation by using branches for flooring on steam room benches or using a broom to stroke the body, as well as to obtain steam from juniper infusion. Juniper broom is not prepared in advance, but is used immediately after cutting, since dried leaves lose their beneficial properties.

Nice stones

If the stones are chosen correctly, they bring great benefits to the human body. When steaming occurs, some of the minerals contained in them turn into steam, which carries healing properties.

After numerous studies of various types, lists of the most beneficial stones for the body were compiled. Today the range is quite large and they can cure:

• Joints;
• Cold;
• Kidney diseases.

Jadeite contains the most useful substances. It includes:

• Calcium;
• Iron;
• Magnesium;
• Copper.

Moreover, the amount of such substances is considered the most optimal. When the heater is filled with jadeite, the air is filled with a large number of microelements. Hot steam turns into a kind of cocktail of useful substances.