The Most Creosote I've Ever Had....

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BurnIt13

BurnIt13

Minister of Fire
Jun 10, 2010
636
Central MA
This goes as a reminder to those who sweep your own chimney.....don't put it off!!! Even after you've burnt for a few years and think you know what you are doing, don't be complacent and assume your chimney is clean as a whistle.

No...I didn't have a chimney fire, and there wasn't any recent excitement....just the surprise of the amount of soot swept from my chimney yesterday using my SootEater.

I swept the chimney on December 1st, 2013. Since then I've burnt about a 1/3 cord of chunks and uglies that were not ideally seasoned (low 20's), 1-1/3 cord of pine that was in the high teens, and a 1/3 cord or oak that was in the high teens.

This year I've made a significant effort to keep the flue temp (probe) around 600F to keep the flue as clean as possible.

I had originally planned to run the SootEater up the chimney on February 1st but kept putting it off until yesterday. How much did I sweep out?!?!?
ALMOST 8 CUPS!!!! - That's a half gallon!!!

I am always amazed by others who posted that they get a bucket full or a coffee can or whatever out of their chimney....the most I ever got was 3 cups! Of course, this was because I was sweeping more often due to the fact that I was a newb and am generally paranoid about my house burning down.

My sweepings yesterday were mostly brownish soot but there were some flakes mixed in...probably from the cap area.

Is it my wood? The extra frigid temps causing my exterior chimney to be colder than normal? An air leak? Who knows. The point of this story is to get out there and sweep....don't put it off because you assume it will be fine.
;sick
 
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So what do you have for a chimney? Eight cups doesn't sound like a 'sound the alarms' amount.

I've got 30' of 7" stainless. When I was running my old boiler, the norm was a couple of gallons. A few times I got double that - but I knew I was pushing it and it needed it badly. I swept at the beginning & end of heating season, and at least once in the middle but most often twice.
 
I have about 5' of double wall stove pipe and 18' of double wall SS chimney pipe. About 9' worth of the SS sticks out of the roof, so roughly 40% of the chimney is exposed to the elements.

I agree....not quite the "panic button" level of soot, but far more than it should be in my opinion.

I'm sure some of the regulars are going to chime in any minute about how they have 17 years worth of oak ready to go and they get less than a teaspoon when they sweep every other year. I'm jealous.
 
BurnIt13 said:
This goes as a reminder to those who sweep your own chimney.....don't put it off!!! Even after you've burnt for a few years and think you know what you are doing, don't be complacent and assume your chimney is clean as a whistle.

No...I didn't have a chimney fire, and there wasn't any recent excitement....just the surprise of the amount of soot swept from my chimney yesterday using my SootEater.

I swept the chimney on December 1st, 2013. Since then I've burnt about a 1/3 cord of chunks and uglies that were not ideally seasoned (low 20's), 1-1/3 cord of pine that was in the high teens, and a 1/3 cord or oak that was in the high teens.

This year I've made a significant effort to keep the flue temp (probe) around 600F to keep the flue as clean as possible.

I had originally planned to run the SootEater up the chimney on February 1st but kept putting it off until yesterday. How much did I sweep out?!?!?
ALMOST 8 CUPS!!!! - That's a half gallon!!!

I am always amazed by others who posted that they get a bucket full or a coffee can or whatever out of their chimney....the most I ever got was 3 cups! Of course, this was because I was sweeping more often due to the fact that I was a newb and am generally paranoid about my house burning down.

My sweepings yesterday were mostly brownish soot but there were some flakes mixed in...probably from the cap area.

Is it my wood? The extra frigid temps causing my exterior chimney to be colder than normal? An air leak? Who knows. The point of this story is to get out there and sweep....don't put it off because you assume it will be fine.
;sick
Click to expand...

I'm glad you posted this. I am burning with a 30 also and did my first sweep since November today and got about the same. My wood is similar quality as yours was, not super wet but not as dry as it should be either. I was a bit nervious at the results of the sweep but reading your results are similar to mine, I feel much better.
 
Good post BurnIt13.

No, you probably were in no danger yet but getting that much, I'd have been cleaning too.

As for others who may have seen some of my posts where we do not clean our chimney often, that does not mean it is not checked on a regular basis. It gets checked at least 4 times each heating season and cleaned if needed. If not needed, we are very thankful.
 
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It should also be mentioned that many people do not have the ability to check their flue on a regular basis. I have a steep roof and the top of the chimney is 9ft above the surface, so unless I have a ladder truck there is no way for me to look down. The only way I can check my flue is to clean it.

So for all you procrastinators....go and clean your flue! It could be worse than you think!
 
Yes but only a couple feet. But I don't think that's an accurate gauge on nastiness for my particular installation. If I'm going to get into trouble it is going to be the 9ft that is sticking out of the roof.

I've used the Sooteater only so far as the rods are flexible enough to clean through the door of the 30. Sooner or later I am going to attempt running a brush up the flue from the door using some PVC conduit as it is pretty flexible (and cheaper) compared to fiberglass rods. Taking my stovepipe apart for access to the flue is difficult at best. I did that once and the amount of force needed to disassemble was too much. If I did that once per month I'd be worried about something breaking in no time.

If I am successful in using the PVC conduit I am somewhat inclined to find a used inspection camera and run it up the flue to take a look after cleaning. I haven't looked yet but I imagine they can't be that bad.
 
No cleanout on the bottom of your chimney?

Can you modify your piping to install a bottom cleanout?

Back when I was generating creosote, it was the bottom that I paid most attention to - that's where it would light off from, if it were to light off, closer to the fire. If things got built up on top, I could readily see that most times just by looking up at my chimney cap & seeing how much build up was visible between the top of chimney, and bottom of cap. Binoculars helped with that sometimes. I have a 2 storey house, I didn't want to go up there any more that I had to - and it got to a 'no way' situation after I put new steel up there.
 
Nope, no cleanout. The pipe goes straight up off the stove to the ceiling, then through a chase in an upstairs bedroom, then out the roof.
 
I swept early January after 13 weeks of burning. Got a 32oz kroger can of coffee filled. I didn't think it was excessive, but some moderators here thought it was.

You got 64oz after ~11 weeks, so a tad bit more then my setup.

But again even then I think there is a difference between 64 oz of dry brown flaky stuff and 64 oz of dark shiny tar. You hopefully got mostly the dry flaky stuff that wasn't shiny... hopefully.

The important part was you got up there and did it!
 
Yup. Mostly soot with a few small speckles of shiny pieces, most likely from the cap area. With the somewhat dim lighting the soot looked very dark but when I pointed the flash light at it was brownish.

Another fun fact. I dumped the sweepings back into the stove as I had cleaned out most of my ashes. When I got some kindling going the brownish soot was more or less inert....but the shiny flakes glowed when there was flame on them, kind of like how you would expect small coals to glow. I can definitely see how a chimney would light off if it was full of the shiny stuff.
 
BurnIt13 said:
ALMOST 8 CUPS!!!! - That's a half gallon!!!
Is it my wood? The extra frigid temps causing my exterior chimney to be colder than normal? An air leak? Who knows. The point of this story is to get out there and sweep....don't put it off because you assume it will be fine.
;sick
Click to expand...
Probably a combination of both.
I have relatively easy access to the chimney on my roof and use to inspect it often to learn how it was behaving and monitor what was going on. I noticed there was a very sharp accumulation of creosote at the top exposed 5ft section during cold, especially windy, periods of weather. In fact the only time I noticed wet creosote forming on my chimney cap was during an exceptionally cold windy couple weeks. In fact it was so windy that most of the wet creosote I saw, that had dripped off the chimney cap, was blown down wind up to about 3 ft away from the chimney itself, very little had actually dripped straight down. Also 95% of the creosote I do get it my chimney accumulates in the very top 5 ft of exposed chimney above my roof, even though it's insulated it is still gets colder that the rest of the chimney, which includes 7 ft of double wall above the stove, and another 7 ft of SS insulated flue in the attic space.
The other thing is, the longer the chimney, the more chance the smoke has too cool down, and the more creosote accumulation you are going to get. I have an old smoke dragon stove in my shop that I frequently choke right down to get the longest burns I can. Despite choking it down so much and burning dirty I hardly get any creosote accumulation in that chimney, the reason seems to be because the chimney is so short the smoke is still very warm when it exist the chimney. It is 5 ft of single wall, and 7 ft of SS insulated, with only about 4 ft of that above the roof.
 
Will be cleaning mine again this wknd for the 3rd time. Still leery about my new stove and burn habits. I've been noticing that when I open the door to load some wood lately, a showering of dry flaky ash comes out the chimney at the top and onto our deck.
 
So the NC30 is a good stove for sooteater's bottom up cleaning through the door method? I have noticed that you can stack and shift the baffle boards to gain flue access without removing burn tubes and breaking those screws. It would be great to sweep from below through the stove since I too have an all vertical flue setup and single wall that is very hard to get apart.
 
Highbeam i would recommend pulling those screws once a year and coating them with anti seize that way they wont break when you need to get them out drilling and tapping inside a stove is a real pain in the a.
 
Another lesson to be learned is to sweep more often if you're burning wood over 20% moisture content. I bet 80% of what you got was because of the not quite seasoned enough wood.
 
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bholler said:
Highbeam i would recommend pulling those screws once a year and coating them with anti seize that way they wont break when you need to get them out drilling and tapping inside a stove is a real pain in the a.
Click to expand...

If I'm lucky enough to get them out one time i have a big bottle of copper hitemp antiseize to slather on.
 
we use that on everything it works pretty well and good luck I hate when they break off
 
Highbeam said:
So the NC30 is a good stove for sooteater's bottom up cleaning through the door method? I have noticed that you can stack and shift the baffle boards to gain flue access without removing burn tubes and breaking those screws. It would be great to sweep from below through the stove since I too have an all vertical flue setup and single wall that is very hard to get apart.
Click to expand...

When I sweep, every cord to cord and a half, I also give the stove a thorough cleaning....so removing the secondary burn tubes and the baffle boards is part of the process. I like to vacuum them out. It also gives me a chance brush down the inside of the stove as well. It probably adds 5 minutes to the whole job. Of course...I've got a can of 2,200F stainless anti-sieze to keep those bolts from snapping.

My wood next year should be 1 cord of 9 month seasoned pine which will be in the high teens, 1.5 cords of 2 yr maple and cherry, and about a half cord of 2yr red oak. So next year should be even better than this year.

After that everything will be 3yr red oak. I processed 9 cords this past spring which will be good for three seasons. This spring I will be processing another 3 cords to keep me three years ahead.
 
my old hearthstone produced virtually zero creosote, mostly because i burned it so hot all the time. i only needed to sweep every 2 years!!!! and even then, all i got was a coffee cup or so, of mostly fly ash.

my new BK is much different. i tried a really slow burn last night, my cat stalled and the whole inside of the firebox was glazed. i fired her back up hot and it all was gone in a few minutes. its only been in for a few weeks i will be curious to see what it looks like in a few more.
 
shoot-straight said:
My new BK is much different. i tried a really slow burn last night, my cat stalled and the whole inside of the firebox was glazed. i fired her back up hot and it all was gone in a few minutes. its only been in for a few weeks i will be curious to see what it looks like in a few more.
Click to expand...

Your fire box may have been glazed but I'm willing to bet your cat did a decent job cleaning up the smoke. This has always made me wonder:

If everything was equal, same species wood, same 20% MC....What would produce less soot/creosote in the chimney:
1. A Blaze King running low and slow with the cat still active but with a 350 flue temp at the probe or...
2. A secondary stove, like the Englander 30 running clean with a 600F flue temp (exactly like what I've been doing).

I wonder only because I am strongly considering the BK Ashford 30. But since my house is smallish I will be running it on the low and slow, cooler end of the scale. If I had a 350F flue temp I am worried about it being way too low at the cap. With a 23ft run and 9ft exposed I worry it would create a mess.

Do the cats really clean up the gook and basically just send warm air up the chimney? Or am I at risk of an even dirtier chimney if I go low and low with a BK?
 
My chimney become much dirtier burning the BK low and slow in the same house, same hearth, same wood, etc. compared to the hearthstone which wasted tons of wood and had double the flue temps. I'd like to believe the hype that cat stoves are super clean and maybe they are at some medium setting but when run on low all the time the flue temps are also low and the flue gets black puffy creosote.

Totally worth it though. Maybe higher burn temps of those other cat stoves that are unable to burn slowly allow for cleaner flues.
 
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Highbeam said:
My chimney become much dirtier burning the BK low and slow in the same house, same hearth, same wood, etc. compared to the hearthstone which wasted tons of wood and had double the flue temps. I'd like to believe the hype that cat stoves are super clean and maybe they are at some medium setting but when run on low all the time the flue temps are also low and the flue gets black puffy creosote.

Totally worth it though. Maybe higher burn temps of those other cat stoves that are unable to burn slowly allow for cleaner flues.
Click to expand...
Thanks Highbeam. I as well have been wondering this. The guy across the street had a chimney fire this winter that I witnessed. I ran over and told him and while we were talking he said he had a blaze king and had dry wood (not sure about the dry wood part) my wife thinks he may have been burning garbage but who knows. And no blaze king owners im not saying he had a chimney fire because of the stove he owned!
 
Seanm said:
Thanks Highbeam. I as well have been wondering this. The guy across the street had a chimney fire this winter that I witnessed. I ran over and told him and while we were talking he said he had a blaze king and had dry wood (not sure about the dry wood part) my wife thinks he may have been burning garbage but who knows. And no blaze king owners im not saying he had a chimney fire because of the stove he owned!
Click to expand...

Could have been the non-cat models, the Briarwood or the Guardian. Those EPA secondary stoves will dirty up just like any other if run poorly. Any chance you know what model he has?
 
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