Soot eater and How much soot is too much?

What you burn (seasoned/wet) may cause you to get more/less build up but if it concerns you take a look up or down the chimney half way through the season just make sure everything is ok but the past few years I'm admittedly burning not so ideal wood, but every year my chimney guy comes and it takes a little over 30 minutes to brush clean and get everything that falls down and always remarks how easy mine is to clean and how clean it is after he's done. I have a 6 inch SS liner in my wood burner.

From what my chimney guy tells me my main concern is that last foot or so before the top on the liner. On both my pellet stove and my wood burner it tends to get gummy and build up the top of the chimner/liner opening by the end of the year because the vapors cool off and tend to stick up at the top. More so on the wood burner, but my pellet liner is only 4 inches.

But if you're concerned with how much you get at the end of the year you can wait for a sunny day where your roof is dry ans go up for a peek in January or February.

Is the masonry chimney on an outside wall? I've got a 17' insulated liner in an external masonry chimney and I got maybe a 1.5 qt. saucepan's worth, most of it at the top of the liner. I burned fairly dry wood in a cat stove.

Agreed, do a mid-season check and brushing for a while to get a better idea how it goes with the drier wood.

Your description of your chimney set up was a bit confusing to me. Are you saying you have a brick chimney that is on the outside of your house and that you have a SS flex liner inside it and then you have a 36" section of single wall pipe sticking out the top of the brick chimney? If that's your set up then I can see why you would have a problem with creosote building up in that top most section. I would think you would want to at least use some double or triple wall pipe for that top most section to keep the gasses/smoke from hitting such a cold pipe on their way out of your flue.

Not sure how that transition would be accomplished, but I agree that's probably where a good amount of buildup occurs.
I get the most buildup in the top foot or so of my Class A setup.

My massive brick chimney is centrally located in my house and serves as a great thermal mass letting off stored heat from my stove. However, the top four feet of chimney sticking out top of my roof is just shedding heat to the outdoors. So, when I installed my SS liner I ran about five feet of insulation down my chimney to help my liner stay hot all the way up. When I recently cleaned my flue it looked as though the insulation did its job because the top of my liner was as clean as the section lower down in the part of my chimney that is inside the house. So, if you switch out that single wall to double or triple wall you might want to pop your rain cap and shove some insulation down between your SS liner and your clay liner. Every bit helps.

My stove pipe goes in to the chimney with a liner so there is a T where the stove pipe meets the liner. I was wondering how deep the T should be going down. Why I am asking because the bottom of the T was full of shoot and then some. Hope this make sense.

The bottom section of my T connector extends about two and half inches below the horizontal pipe that connects to the stove. I don't know if the draft of the chimney would be affected if you extended that bottom section or not. On the Woodstock Classic stove on the lower level of our house the clay tile flue extends about 16" below the thimble opening in the chimney for the stove pipe and that stove drafts fine right into an 8"x11" clay tile flue going straight up around 23'. On my new Jotul F600 woodstove with the factory T connector I can lift the top off the stove with two bolts to look directly into the T connector. If you have easy access to your T connection you might want to inspect the T from time to time to make sure creosote and soot is not breaking free from you liner and piling up in the bottom of the T. While you have it open it's easy to reach in and scoop out any accumulation. When I did my chimney cleaning that's how I removed my soot when I finished with the Sooteater. I also used my shop vac to clean any remnants and to tidy up the top shelf of the baffle.

Nick Mystic said:

The bottom section of my T connector extends about two and half inches below the horizontal pipe that connects to the stove. I don't know if the draft of the chimney would be affected if you extended that bottom section or not. On the Woodstock Classic stove on the lower level of our house the clay tile flue extends about 16" below the thimble opening in the chimney for the stove pipe and that stove drafts fine right into an 8"x11" clay tile flue going straight up around 23'. On my new Jotul F600 woodstove with the factory T connector I can lift the top off the stove with two bolts to look directly into the T connector. If you have easy access to your T connection you might want to inspect the T from time to time to make sure creosote and soot is not breaking free from you liner and piling up in the bottom of the T. While you have it open it's easy to reach in and scoop out any accumulation. When I did my chimney cleaning that's how I removed my soot when I finished with the Sooteater. I also used my shop vac to clean any remnants and to tidy up the top shelf of the baffle.

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That is what I did but if you look true the thimble you could see the pile of soot. I think that was way to much. That is why I was asking how deep the T would be

When I cleaned my ss flue liner, which is 15' tall, I had only burned between the end of February 2013 and May. I was going to remove the bottom T cover to remove the soot/creosote that fell to the bottom of the T connector, but when I removed the three sheet metal screws that hold it on the cap wouldn't budge. I have limited space to reach the bottom cap due to my stove sitting directly in front of my fireplace opening with only five inches of space on either side. So, instead of trying to wrestle the cap off I just cleaned up the pile of soot through the stove opening, which is easy to access on my Jotul F600 by removing two bolts and lifting off a plate on the top of the stove. The soot after that short burning period did not even reach the horizontal pipe leading to the stove. In other words, there was less than two and a half inches of soot in the six inch diameter liner. If you are getting enough creosote in the bottom of your T so that it rises clear up to cover some of the horizontal pipe leading to your stove after a cleaning I don't know that you have a problem, assuming you remove it all after your sweep. However, as I mentioned earlier, creosote will break loose and fall down your liner on its own just in the course of burning, contraction and expansion of your liner due to heating and cooling, etc. If you let that accumulation get to the point that it fills your bottom section of your T and begins to restrict your smoke from exiting your stove, then you have a problem. You would likely notice a reduced draft to your stove if this started occurring. Things like smoke puffing into your room when you open the door to your stove to add wood.

I did clean it all out with the wet vac and there was 12 cups of soot.

Not meaning to hijack......my brick chimney (outside wall), is lined with about 14 feet of flex liner, I get more soot than expected when I clean.....should I be looking at replacing the liner with an insulated liner ????.....the 14 feet is an estimate, but probably pretty close. My wood supply is getting better, but could an insulated liner also help ??

Mine is an exterior Chimney....decent secondary....not great

begreen said:

By all means insulate that liner. It should help. If the chimney could be extended a couple feet that may also show a nice improvement.

Do you have a block off plate installed as well?

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Yes, we have a Block Off Plate....the Liner is full length, to go any further probably wouldn't look right.....Thanks