Wedding Services

Thinking of hiring a chimney sweep for

 your wedding service?

Chimney sweeps are a traditional accompaniment to a wedding and are said to bring good luck, fertility and fortune to the bride and groom.The tradition of a chimney sweep bringing the bride and groom luck on their wedding day is one that goes back many years to the reign of King George II.

 The history of the Chimney Sweep

The story goes that as King George II was travelling in his carriage the horse attached to the carriage suddenly became wild and frenzied. The only person brave enough to take action and stop the horse from bolting with the carriage containing King George on it was a local chimney sweep who courageously stepped in and saved the day.

King George was so grateful to the chimney sweep for saving his life that he issued a Royal Decree that all chimney sweeps were to be regarded as bearers of good luck and that chimney sweeps were to be treated with the greatest of respect.

From that day forth the tradition of chimney sweeps being regarded as omens of good luck was established and this is why many couples make the choice to hire a chimney sweep to attend their wedding day.

 What does a chimney sweep do on the Wedding Day?

On you’re wedding day I will arrive in traditional Victorian Style your chimney sweepsweep costume, including the customary chimney sweeps brush, top hat, coat with tails and soot blackened face.

I will allow plenty of time for the bride and groom and also any guests who wish to have a photo opportunity with me.

In order to bestow the Chimney Sweeps good luck I will have a handshake for the groom and a good luck kiss for the bride.

With the power given by the Royal Decree of King George II I will then recite a message of good luck for the future to the bride and groom. I will then present the bride and groom with a personalized certificate and a special gift.

In order to ensure good luck make sure to hire a genuine chimney sweep.

Woman Extracts Raccoon From Chimney With Pole

This is the Second Raccoon Michelle Heyer has found in chimney!

Michelle Heyer was surprised that police responded to her call about a raccoon in her chimney, but they did.
It was the second time a raccoon had been trapped in the chimney of her Bryden Road home, and the first was big enough to crawl out, she said.
But this one could not stretch its arms and legs across the length of the inside of the chimney, where she spotted him Saturday, April 7.
Beachwood Police officers referred her to the animal warden, but she was worried they would kill the animal. So she took matters into her own hands.
Heyer took a long pole and stuck it in her chimney from above, hoping he would crawl out. Then she had to leave for a week on business.
While she was gone, she said, she worried that she would come home to a dead animal.
But the raccoon made it out safely. And now, she said, she plans to get the chimney cover installed. More stories at http://chimneyinfo.net/technobabble/

Wood Heat for the Home

Wood Heat for the Home & the Environment

When you heat your home – whether you burn wood, rely on natural gas, or use electricity derived from the most common sources like coal and other fossil fuels – there will likely be some environmental tradeoffs for keeping you warm. This article is intended as an overview of those tradeoffs, with particular emphasis on wood fuel. When you burn wood, there are many actions you can take to reduce environmental impacts. The first step, and the purpose of this article, is understanding those impacts.

Greenhouse Gas Emission

Greenhouse gasses such as water vapor, Carbon Dioxide (CO2), methane, nitrous oxide, and ozone absorb and emit radiation and are the fundamental cause of the greenhouse effect. The increase in greenhouse gasses by human activities is the primary cause of global warming. When wood is burned, CO2 is released into the atmosphere. Burning wood produces the same exact amount of CO2 as if the wood rots and biodegrades naturally. The difference is the speed of the process. If harvested and burned optimally and no greenhouse gasses are emitted in production and transportation, wood fuel would be considered carbon neutral. For comparison, natural gas produces comparable Co2 when burned (which it would not produce if not burned) and significant amounts of methane. If you heat your house on electricity generated from oil or coal, the greenhouse gas emission is even worse than natural gas.

Other Emissions

Air pollution results whenever fuel is burned, and wood is no exception. Whenever something is burned – be it wood, gas, or any fuel – particulate matter is released into the air. Particulate matter results in the soot you see after something is burned, and these fine particles – known as particulate pollution when they become airborne – cause many respiratory issues and health problems. Thus, it’s important to limit your exposure to smoke.

Another group of air pollutants that are the byproduct of home heating are polluting gasses. One such gas is carbon monoxide, which forms from incomplete combustion. Other pollutants of concern that result from improperly burned wood are nitrogen oxides and volatile organic compounds. Some of these pollutants can be carcinogenic. The risk from cancer-causing agents becomes much greater if additional undesirable chemicals – often found when trash, heavily inked paper, or pesticide-saturated plant matter is burned – are burned as well.

Deforestation and Renewable Resources

Wood, in contrast to fossil fuels, is a renewable resource. However, not all wood is replenished. The wood you burn in your fireplace may or may not be derived from deforested wood – wood from forests that are cut down without the trees being replaced. Other sources of firewood include in sustainable logging, sustainable plantations, agroforestry, and waste wood such as deadfall, debris, and recycled pellets. Fortunately, deforested wood is not typically used for firewood in North Carolina and surrounding areas, for it is certainly the least eco-friendly sourced wood. Deforestation and the soil erosion that often accompanies it results in habitat destruction for countless species of plants and animals. Deforestation also contributes to global warming since trees absorb greenhouse gasses such as CO2.

It is easy to see the importance of practicing sustainability when using wood for fuel. Wood fuel, when procured responsibly, is indeed a renewable resource.

Some Takeaways

1. Wood sourced responsibly and burned near its source will have a lower carbon footprint and less ecological impacts.
2. The more smoke you see, the more pollution there will be.
3. The more efficient you burn, the less fuel (wood) you will use, and the less pollution there will be.
4. The actions you can take to burn smarter can be grouped into several categories:
   • Using the right fuel. Not all wood makes good firewood.
   • Running a smart operation. How you light and maintain a fire can really matter.
   • Ensuring your burning appliances – chimneys, fireplace, fireplace insert, or woodstove – are as efficient as possible through upgrades and maintenance.
   • Ensuring your home is energy efficient to reduce heat loss so you need to consume less fuel for heat.

When you burn wood in your fireplace or wood stove, you really have a lot of control on how it impacts the environment. I will post more pages like this one in the near future.

The history of tree-hugging, and the future of name-calling

Anyone who ever sympathized with Eric Cartman‘s declaration, “I hate hippies! … I want to kick ‘em in the nuts” probably finds the word “tree-hugger” useful — and plenty of other people dig the word, too.

Maybe you’d rather be a vile SUV-cuddler?

At this point, it’s hard to imagine the vocabulary of environmentalism or insults without “tree-hugger” and “tree-hugging.” And these ol’ chestnuts continue to spawn variations: tree-huggitude, tree-huggery, tree-huggage, tree-huggy, tree-huggish, non-tree-hugging, and treehugtastic were all google-able by this intrepid reporter.

The terms often punctuate news stories too. Last month, in The Financial Times, Paul Miles claimed that “caustic columnists” consider independent yogurt-makers such as himself to be “tree-hugging loonies.” In August, New Hampshire’s state environmental commissioner, Michael Nolin, caught heat for standing by while a fellow administrator dismissively referred to “tree-huggers” — guess Nolin forgot his job was to be the state’s tree-hugger-in-chief. Then there was the British Wind Energy Association’s “touch a turbine” campaign this spring to encourage folks to learn about, touch, and — you guessed it — hug wind turbines. The campaign was described in the London Sunday Times as “21st-century tree-hugging.”

What are the roots of this popular pejorative? Many sources claim“tree-hugger” was born as part of the 1970s-era Chipko movement in India, which involved peaceful resistance and literal tree-hugging. Unfortunately, this logical explanation is as full of crap as the popular etymology of “crap,” a word that was not spawned by the tastefully named plumber Thomas Crapper. According to the Oxford English Dictionary — the bible of the English language, but with fewer severe weather events — “tree-hugger” has been out there since at least 1965. The first example discusses a battle in Appleton, Wis., between “the tree huggers and the city.” The OED goes on to show the depreciative, positive, and even literal meanings of the term, including an example about a Barnum and Bailey circus monkey.

Only one related insult is even semi-established: the slur “panda-hugger,” which refers to supporters of China, not cuddlers of adorable bears. But a new frontier for hugging was opened on the Feb. 7, 2006,Colbert Report, when Stephen Colbert’s attack-poodle character chewed on the leg of former CIA director James Woolsey. As Woolsey explained why drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge was a bad idea, Colbert interrupted with a question that was probably raised for the first time in all of human discourse: “You’re not a caribou-hugger, are you?” Making hug-related allegations is a habit for Colbert, who has slammed other evildoers with the labels “Bill-of-Rights-hugger,” “Constitution-hugger,” and “lung-hugger.”

As has been noted by everyone and that circus monkey’s uncle, Colbert is a pitch-perfect spoof of the right. The movement’s first-rate (first-grade?) name-calling tactics are summed up admirably by the title of linguist Geoffrey Nunberg’s recent book Talking Right: How Conservatives Turned Liberalism into a Tax-Raising, Latte-Drinking, Sushi-Eating, Volvo-Driving, New York Times-Reading, Body-Piercing, Hollywood-Loving, Left-Wing Freak Show.

Nunberg claims that conservatives have done more than just tap into conceptual frames. He says they’ve appropriated the language of politics on a very basic level, including structures like the “Volvo-driving, sushi-eating” compounds. Though the book is a careful, focused analysis of Republican and Democrat language use, one message comes through that’s a lot less sophisticated than the style and author: name-calling works, and tree-huggers of all sorts ought to do more of it.