Cleaning your chimneys?

[Warbird]

Wow.  That is a *lot* of creosote build up.  Are you burning a lot of green/wet wood?  Are you letting your fire smolder a lot?

[SwampDonkey]

I clean my chimney every fall and the pipes once a month. Hardly ever anything in the pipes. Last fall I didn't even have a pale of creasote from the flu. I also put creasote conditioner in the hot fire. My flu is in the centre of the house and over 40 feet to the top. The roof is too steep to be climbing up there and besides I'de be like a cat held over water.  :D ;D

[Weekend_Sawyer]

The woodstove has to burn down to a smolder or it will run us out. I try and get it good and hot atleast once a burn but it still smolders alot.

I think I want to try some of that anti creosote stuff you put in the fireplace.

Jon

[rebocardo]

Funny story!

I noticed my screen on my chimney loads up with ash and eventually clogs so I got rid of it and only put it on during summer to kept things out. It would be suicide for anything to neter the pipe during winter. My wood stove black pipe (inside) and SS triple pipe (exterior) was so clean I cleaned it with a rag just to knock loose ash off. That was after about 3 cords of oak and one cord of pine.

I got some of that chimney clean stuff to throw on the coals, to me the label seems to indicate all I am throwing on the smoldering coals is TSP or something.

[Tom]

What is TSP?

[Warbird]

The woodstove has to burn down to a smolder or it will run us out. I try and get it good and hot atleast once a burn but it still smolders alot.

I think I want to try some of that anti creosote stuff you put in the fireplace.

Jon

Yeah...  We do about the same with our wood stove.  The fire is down to a smolder by the morning time.  We have a catalytic stove, though, so we can't use any of that creosote conditioner.  It'd ruin the catalyst.

[stonebroke]

TSP equals Tri sodium phosphate I think

Stonebroke

[jackpine]

I have an outdoor wood-fired boiler that I bought without the insulation or outer jacket, just boiler,pump,fittings and heat exchanger. I installed it in a seperate room behind my shop and utilize the waste heat off the boiler to help heat my shop. The chimney goes up thru the roof and is an insulated stainless. The chimney stays nice and clean and I run a brush thru it every September before heating season and don't touch it again. The screen was another matter, would plug up in a week, so I took it off after one year.Now the only problem is the underside of the cap will build up with cresote after a couple of weeks but if I open the furnace door when the forced draft is on and let it roar for a few minutes I can burn that off ;D Probably takes care of any cresote in the chimney too :D. I don't walk away after doing this and if the roof has no snow on it I watch for falling embers.

Bill

[SwampDonkey]

I should say I use the conditioner on the hot coals, not a roaring fire.

TSP is trisodium phosphate.

Also I only use a couple cap fulls at a time.

[musikwerke]

I've never cleaned my chimney.   Now,before you jump on me let me explain.  It's a brick chimney, tile lined.  It is in the center of the house, cathedral ceiling and exposed all the way to the peak so it stays warm.  No cap.  I heat exclusively with wood with a Newmac hot-air furnace and while I burn any kind of wood, hard or soft, that comes my way, it's always dry and if the house gets too warm I open a window or let the fire go out; never choke off the air.  I get maybe 1/2 of a 5 gallon pail of dry granular creoste from the bottom clean-out per year which I throw right back in the furnace and re-burn.  After 30 years, the mortar seal around the top of the chimney was erroded so that rain water was seeping down between the bricks and liner so one of this past Summer's projects was to re-do that.  A perfect time I thought to use my never-used chimney brush and rods.  They're still brand spanking new.  There was nothing to clean.

[deutz4]

Every stove/chimney combination has its own characteristics. I used to live in an old farmhouse with an unheated upstairs. The chimney ran up the interior. The stove ran pretty hard to keep the place warm. The only problem I had was where the chimney came through the roof. I had to climb the fairly steep roof about once a month to get rid of about a foot of buildup that would gradually close up. I HATED that. I kept a nylon rope tyed around the chimney to help pull myself up. The stovepipe was never dirty. Now I live in a one story well insulated house with a short exterior chimney. The stove is too big and spends most of its time choked down. I still spend more time in shorts than in summer. The chimney gets cleaned once a year with about 1/2 pail of creosote. But every 2-3 weeks I have to clean my stovepipe. In 10 minutes I'm done and my feet don't leave the ground. Can't beat it!

[bull]

I have a New Yorker wood boiler inside my cellar with an outside Chimney on the north end of the house, boiler burns hot and fire box will burn out between loads all fires are started with hot load of dry pine, boiler will burn six hours and retain heat for another 2-3 hours. I clean the chimney once a year and three times for the flue pipe. 1-2 gallons of soot- creasote from the chimneyfor the year.... depends on the time of the season and the outside temps for the flue pipe sometimes nothing sometimes up to a gallon..

a hot pine fire gets the chimney good and hot which appears to help keep down the creasote....
also all wood is 2-3 years dry.....

[Don P]

I've never cleaned ours either. Smallest Jotul stove,interior warm chimney, I took out the interior dampers on the stove, put in an intake in the bottom and run it undamped. In other words an oxidizing flame, I've always burned wide open with dry wood on every stove we've had and have never had a creosote problem. The only smoke I make is on startup. My neighbor has always argued that I waste wood. He burns 3x what I do, uses green/dry mixed because it makes a "better fire", and is always loaded with creosote, not to mention polluting to beat the band. To each his own  :. That's also why I find it hard to believe the water stoves are legal, never seen one burn clean.

[SwampDonkey]

Only time you can see smoke here is on startup as well. Also on very cold mornings you can see smoke. I have well seasoned wood as well. I clean because it's easy to become complacent and it makes you inspect things. I have a lot of flu from the basement to the top and it is all inside except the last 4 feet beyond the roof peek. I seen what burning green wood and green sawdust gets you. The old neighbors (sold and moved now) next door have had many flu fires and I don't know how they could get insurance. The new neighbor has all outside boilers, but burn green wood.

[rebocardo]

> The stove is too big and spends most of its time choked down.

Yea, that is why I bought a smaller one (its GA afterall) instead of a larger one, so I could run it full blast all the way without overheating the house. It can still get to 80 pretty quick with dry seasoned oak.

Only problem is it can go from 75 to 60 pretty quick overnight when it is 20 outside since the stove can burn a load to ashes in two hours with no embers left.

[tim1234]

Be careful with the stainless Class A flue pipes.  I learned after my first chimney fire (don't throw parts of your dried christmas tree in the stove : ) from the chimney sweep that you need to use a synthetic brush on the class A pipe or you void the warrenty and possibly damage the pipe.

We clean once a year.  This is my second year heating and the first year I tried to cut back the air too much and got a little build-up.  Not much but enough to catch fire when the Christmas Tree went up.  If I need a little heat, I burn small loosly stacked pieces fast and hot and then when you get down to coals you can cut back the air.  Coals are only carbon and have no Creosote left.

The best thing is to learn to burn the best you can and to know your chmmey. 

Have you ever started your fires from the top down  ???  Put your biggest pieces on the bottom, put smaller on the top and a few pieces of kindling on the top.  One piece of newspaper or a piece of fatwood on the top and the fire starts great.  I wish I could get all my fires to burn as nicely as a freshly started top-down fire.

Tim

[SwampDonkey]

I haven't used kindling in years. I just stuff some bark, preferably yellow birch and some newspaper in under the pile with smaller sticks on the bottom in November when it's not real cold. Then later the fire is never out. A shovel full of coals starts a fire fast with a little draft. I've had coals in the ash for days, just stir it up with the poker and add wood and heat in no time. Kinda reminds me of those hand warmers you stick in your pocket and they burn for hours inside a fire resistant case. In this instance the ash is the case. ;D

[ohsoloco]

I just noticed in the past week or so that my woodstove is starting to smoke when I open it up.  It's probably just the screen in the rain cap, but I may as well wait for a warm(er) day and brush out the flue while I'm at it.  I should take that screen off for heating season and put it back on in the spring.  Had to wire it on this fall.  There was a little gap in the fit, and I sucked three dead birds out of the flue, and scared one out of the stovepipe.  They all looked like crows to me  :D 

I'll be interested to see how much creosote I get out of there this year.  I put new windows and storm doors on this summer, and I seem to be burning much less wood....but this means I'm letting the fire go out all the time. 

[SwampDonkey]

Starlings are bad for getting into flues. We used to have chimney swifts here years ago, they are kind of like swallows. But, I haven't seen one for 25 years or more.