Way to clean a stainless steel liner...insanity or not?

I think you're going to get a collective "no" for an answer here. I'd heard that, too, and have even done it before. But somewhere on this forum there's a picture of a wood stove set up outside with 2-3' of stack, and with a few pizza boxes inside, it looked like a rocket launch in reverse! Very sobering. It might work, but what else comes out of Pandora's box when opened may not be to our liking.

Unless Pandora is a pizza company that makes delicious pizza!!

That is the same as purposely starting a chimney fire to clean the flue out.
You should be scared of that poor advice.

As someone who spent his younger years riding backwards on a fire truck...

Don't. Do. That!

Sounds like this guy is a poor business man and a poor provider of information. Rather than take an opportunity to sell you a brush with your flue he gives completely absurd advice on how to clean a flue. Get a proper brush and clean it the right way is the only answer you get here.

Bad idea.

Woodman37 said:

Ok I have a steel chimney liner that was installed along with my add on wood furnace. The liner of course goes up through an existing masonry chimney. The owner of the store I purchased it all from told me a good way to clean this steel liner without a brush is to have a nice bed of coals in the wood burner then throw in a few cardboard boxes then open up the bottom ash door and this will clean the flue. This premonition just scares the hell out of me. Anyone do this ? I fear something hot getting on my roof and maybe catching on fire.

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Have the owner demo this on all his display units in his store. Then don't return to the store again.

It's a bit surprising how some people stay in business when you hear some of the things they tell customers. I have some friends up in Maine who recently bought an outside boiler and the owner of the store told them they could burn green wood in the unit and it would do fine. He swore to them that he burns green wood in his all the time and gets great results. They bought the unit and tried burning green wood and found out they were burning quite a lot of propane to keep their fire going (the unit is very high tech with a propane burner inside to light the fire and re-lite if when it goes out from burning green wood!).

BrotherBart said:

Yeah. Bad idea. A few years ago I burned some cardboard in my old stove in the yard to demonstrate what happens in a six foot stack. No creo, just cardboard.

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........I've seen that before......out the back of an F-4 on take-off roll......don't think i'd want it in the chimney.

Whatever isn't vaporized in the stack (once it lights off as in BB's pic above) is possibly a bunch of smoldering hot embers raining down on you and your neighbors.

For some reason, this reminds me of the sweep who sent some industrial strength whirling implement of destruction down a member's chimney once, and tore the liner to shreds. Another "good" way to clean a chimney. Not.

What pi$$es me off a bit is that even if this doesn't result in any actual damage, the fireworks from the chimney might be enough to scare the crap out of anyone around you. Wood burners already have enough negative publicity to deal with. Every responsible wood burner takes a bit of a hit. IMHO this guy should know better.

I would stay away from the card baord and take the safe route of using brushes like the others said!

BrotherBart said:

"Come on Mav. Do some of the wood burner chit!"

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I feel the yurn-ta-burn.....that was a great movie. I was in Omaha and saw it at Offutt AFB with a bunch of Navy Guys. Talk about some friendly ribbing. All in good fun.