Part time wood burners

i cold start 5 days a week...
i get the chimney cleaned once a year, im lucky enough to have started with dry wood... im a worrier by nature, so i was relieved when the chimney guy barely needed to do anything. so, as long as i keep getting the wood dry, once a year seems fine to me, cold starts or no. i probably could go 2 at this rate, but the piece of mind is worth the cost of a sweep.

Sometimes I burn twice a week, sometimes all week long, depends on my schedule. Longest stove stays cold is 2 days. I'm on my 3rd year burning and I sweep once a year so far.

I live alone, am gone 10 hours a day 5 days a week, and my stove isn't that big. I start a fire in the morning and leave it burning when I leave for work at 1pm. Then I start it up again when I get home around 11pm. When I leave for work I don't stuff it full and I turn the air down to keep the fire tame while I'm gone. I cleaned my chimney after 3 months and it was much dirtier than I expected. Luckily, cleaning it is really easy. I could tell it needed to be cleaned because my insert was starting to spit smoke out when I opened the door and it wouldn't get going as hot as it previously did.
I wouldn't call myself a "hobby burner" as I've had a fire going pretty much all the time I'm home since about mid October.

I'm a part time burner as well. Many factors - wife afraid to work the stove, not enough space in the yard for 6-10 cord of storage, NG prices too cheap to make it worth the effort scrounging or (worse) buying that much wood.

I generally burn all weekends and occasionally do a midweek overnight on really cold days. For the weekend burns the stove gets lit once Friday afternoon and doesn't go out till Monday mid-day.

I end up burning 1.5-2 cord a year and sweep yearly. Have never seen much build up.

i burn all the time and check at least a couple of times a season. if you are able, this will help you to answer your cleaning question.....if you have easy access to your roof, one day when the stove is warm/cold, just get up and pull the cap and look down the pipe with a flashlight. if its dirty, you'll be able to tell right away. creasote will form at the top portion of the pipe....where its coldest...get a poly brush and ream it out a bit. if you don't have easy access, try pulling the pipe about mid season and taking a peek up the pipe. once you've done that a couple of times during the season, you feel better about your burning. as long as you burn good wood, you should be fine.

cass

I burn two stoves part time. One is in the basement where I work; it gets lit at 9pm weekdays and goes out mid-afternoon. The one upstairs gets lit as necessary, it is supplemental heat to a large passive solar heater system. Both chimneys get cleaned annually whether they need it or not. Both could easily go every other year or longer between cleanings, but I like to stay on top of things (in this case, the roof ).

The key to making this burning style work is preparation, specifically making sufficient kindling in advance. I do that by gathering fallen branches on my property, and collecting scrap from a local commercial doormaker. I cut it to the length needed by my stoves with an electric miter saw and box it or stack it ready to go. It's a slick process and goes very quickly. The cut pieces fall off the saw into the box. Couldn't be easier.

I start a cold stove 7 days a week. I dont feel comfortable letting the stove go while im not home, so we only burn in the evenings and all weekend. I clean my chimney once every 4-6 weeks, just because i worry. Its not that bad, i burn good dry wood. But i can disconnect the black pipe at the stove and remove it and run a brush up the chimney, then the black stove peices, and have everything back together in less than an hour. (Im getting pretty good at it) Just peice of mind for me. I burn about 3.5 crds a yr. Cut over $1000 of oil out of my oil bill last year, so between what i paid for the stove, pipe and wood last year, the stove already paid for itself, and this year, it will pay for the new windows i put in my house.

xjcamaro said:

I start a cold stove 7 days a week. I dont feel comfortable letting the stove go while im not home, so we only burn in the evenings and all weekend. I clean my chimney once every 4-6 weeks, just because i worry. Its not that bad, i burn good dry wood. But i can disconnect the black pipe at the stove and remove it and run a brush up the chimney, then the black stove peices, and have everything back together in less than an hour. (Im getting pretty good at it) Just peice of mind for me. I burn about 3.5 crds a yr. Cut over $1000 of oil out of my oil bill last year, so between what i paid for the stove, pipe and wood last year, the stove already paid for itself, and this year, it will pay for the new windows i put in my house.

Click to expand...

Not to high jack the thread, but I'm wondering what you do to disconnect your pipe? If I did mine, I'd have to lift and tilt the stove in order to gain clearance to remove a section of pipe. My pipe is straight up from the stove through the roof. When I installed it, I had to also tilt the stove in order to shove the pipes together for connection.

I burn mostly evenings and weekends, although lately I have been starting a fire before I leave for work in the morning. Sometimes my wife reloads, sometimes she doesn't. If she doesn't I'll relight the stove in the evening. Supercedars make relighting the stove very easy. I burn a cord of wood and a ton of wood bricks (Eco Bricks this year) per year. I have the chimney swept once a year, the sweep has never said I need to do it more often. It's a 2-story house and I don't like heights so top-down sweeping is out for me and the insert just seems too small to manage a bottom-up sweep without naking a mess, so I leave the sweeping to the pros.

trailrated said:

Not to high jack the thread, but I'm wondering what you do to disconnect your pipe? If I did mine, I'd have to lift and tilt the stove in order to gain clearance to remove a section of pipe. My pipe is straight up from the stove through the roof. When I installed it, I had to also tilt the stove in order to shove the pipes together for connection.

Click to expand...

You need to remove a section of pipe and replace it with an adjustable piece.

trailrated said:

xjcamaro said:

I start a cold stove 7 days a week. I dont feel comfortable letting the stove go while im not home, so we only burn in the evenings and all weekend. I clean my chimney once every 4-6 weeks, just because i worry. Its not that bad, i burn good dry wood. But i can disconnect the black pipe at the stove and remove it and run a brush up the chimney, then the black stove peices, and have everything back together in less than an hour. (Im getting pretty good at it) Just peice of mind for me. I burn about 3.5 crds a yr. Cut over $1000 of oil out of my oil bill last year, so between what i paid for the stove, pipe and wood last year, the stove already paid for itself, and this year, it will pay for the new windows i put in my house.

Click to expand...

Not to high jack the thread, but I'm wondering what you do to disconnect your pipe? If I did mine, I'd have to lift and tilt the stove in order to gain clearance to remove a section of pipe. My pipe is straight up from the stove through the roof. When I installed it, I had to also tilt the stove in order to shove the pipes together for connection.

Click to expand...

I have a stove, and my black pipe goes straight up to the ceiling. What i did last year was, the black pipe connector at the ceiling was sort of long, so i could slide the black pipe up the connector at the ceiling enough that it would clear the stove and swing out of the way, but it seemed like it would wear out the connector sliding and wiggling it to slide it up far enough. So what i did this year was i bought 8" tall draw band. Its just a peice of black pipe that is slit and 2 tightening screws, made to connect two peices together that didnt meet completely. So i then cut about 4" off the top of my back pipe. So then i can set all the black pipe on the stove and set it straight upand there is a gap between the top of my black pipe and the connector on the ceiling. I then use the draw band to connect the two peices. It seals it all up nicely. Then when i need to clean i just undo the two tightening screws on the draw band and pull it off then tilt the black pipe to one side and lift it out of the stove. Then i pull the black pipe apart and set it in a tall bucket and run the brush through it catching all the crap in the bucket.

I then run the brush up through from the ceiling up to the top and back down a whole bunch of times. I have a small bucket that has a hole in the bottom just big enought for the rod to fit through, i hold that to the ceiling as i brush so as i run the brush up through the chimney all the crap falls into the bucket and not all over the place. Now my chimney from the ceiling to cap is only 10 ft, so its not alot to bush. But it makes it very easy to pull apart and clean.