Now that the cold days are approaching, more people want to use their fuel. To do this safely, it is recommended to have the heater swept. René Kuijten then comes by. He has been doing the job since he was sixteen. Climbing a ladder to work at great heights? No problem for him. Until he had a heart attack on the roof almost three years ago.
René visits an average of thirteen houses every day to sweep the chimney. He works in a disciplined manner. Most heaters are swept from below, but sometimes René still has to go up to the roof — like three years ago. Only that didn’t end well. “I had a heart attack on the roof. I managed to get down myself. If I had fainted, I would have fallen fifteen meters. I would not have survived.”
René was taken care of by the woman he was working for. “She saw that I was sweating and thought, ‘This is not good.’ She called 911 while I was lying on her couch. Ten minutes later I was in the hospital and it turned out that I was in the middle of a heart attack.”
That unpleasant experience left its mark. “After the stroke I started thinking. For the first six months I didn’t dare go on the roof anymore. But I kept trying to tell myself that I would succeed. Fortunately, I am healthy again on the roof. You have to keep your head down. Ask yourself whether the tiles are in the right position and hold properly. Every profession carries a danger. If you are too tired or too lax, you should not go on the roof.”
“If I had kept everything, I would have a museum now”
While working, René often comes across bird nests. And sometimes he finds the craziest things in there. “Birds take everything that glitters. If I had kept everything, I would now have a museum: from car headlights to silver spoons and rings.” René used to remove nests that still contained birds. Nowadays he waits until the animals have fledged.
Things also went wrong sometimes. For example, he once swept a chimney from above that had not been properly sealed. “The whole room was black with soot at the time. I saw a small child walking around, and behind it a very white stripe appeared. But that was a long time ago,” he jokes.
For the Omroep Brabant talk show Thijs den Ouden does an internship every week. This week he does this with chimney sweep René Kuijten, where he helps to professionally remove the soot in the stove.