Doug Dow's chimney sweeping brush is at its busiest this time of year.
The retired Lincoln firefighter is working full-time cleaning chimneys, regularly handling five jobs a day at Doug's Top Hat Chimney Sweep.
"I'm trying to slow down, but I'm not having luck," the 66-year-old said.
Lincoln firefighters Bob Reynolds and Derald Murrell started the business in 1978, and Dow joined on 10 years later.
He ran Top Hat Chimney Sweep for several years with fellow Lincoln firefighter Greg Contreras, but now the two each run separate businesses bearing the Top Hat name.
When Dow worked as a fire apparatus operator, driving rigs out of Station 9 in Bethany, he'd do six or seven sweeping jobs a day on his days off.
Driving rigs made him feel like a race car driver, he said. Being a chimney sweep makes him feel like a dentist for houses.
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"It's like cleaning your teeth," Dow said. "You're brushing the inside of the fireplace, cleaning all the soot out of there."
He never guarantees there won't be a problem after he cleans a chimney, but his aim is to mitigate a problem by reducing the combustible material inside that could fuel a fire, he said.
Over the weekend, a dirty wood-burning stove ignited a fire and caused $10,000 damage to a Martell home, Lancaster County Sheriff Terry Wagner said.
None of the four chimney fires Lincoln Fire and Rescue responded to during the first nine months of the year caused damage, according to department statistics.
Between 2013 and 2017, there were 23 chimney fires in the city that caused more than $14,000 in damage.
Chimneys should be swept after two or three truck beds of wood are burnt, or sooner if residents aren't burning dry wood, Dow said.
During a cleaning, a vacuum sucks up the dust and debris. The work isn't as dusty as seen in the movie "Mary Poppins," he said, sitting in the hearth of a Bishop Heights neighborhood home.
Keys to preventing unwanted chimney fires include burning dry wood, leaving a bed of ash and keeping the chimney damper open for 24 hours after a fire is lit, he said.
"It's not worth losing someone's life or losing your home," Dow said.