My Tip - Cleaning Your Pipe Without Getting On the Roof

This site has been a lot of help for me in the past so I just wanted to share something. I don't care much for heights and especially getting on a metal roof in the winter. I devised a method for cleaning a straight triple wall pipe from the comfort of inside your home. Been doing this for over a year and it works great.

First off, my biggest problem before was the hardware cloth (steel screen) on the cap plugging up so I removed it for winter. If you don't replace it in the Spring, birds will find their way down. If you don't have a problem with screen clogging, don't worry about it. Moving on...If possible, pick a day where you can allow your stove to cool off and have alternate heat source for a couple hours.

1. Allow stove to die down and remove all ashes/coals then open stove door and allow it to cool down so you will not get burned.
2. Remove pipe from top of stove to ceiling "box". My box is about 12" x 12" square. Take pipe outside and use your brush to clean it out while allowing ceiling box to cool.
3. Probably by now, ceiling box is cool so touch sides to verify. If it is cool to touch, continue. If not wait until it has cooled.
4. Find a plastic trash bag that is big enough to fit around square ceiling box. I use a standard tall kitchen trash bag. Before attaching trash bag to box, lay bag down and place wide cellophane tape (like strapping tape) to cover a 4" x 4" square around the center of the SIDE of the bag. After doing this, place small hole in center of tape. The tape is to keep bag from tearing. You will follow the reason in a couple of steps.
5. Tear 4 pieces of tape about 6" long and place them nearby. Take the rod you use for your brush and place the end thru the hole in the bag that you put the tape on with threaded end going into top of bag. Attach your brush to rod.
6. Push end of brush just into bottom of pipe while placing bag around ceiling box. Take the 4 pieces of tape you tore off and attach bag to box at corners. Your bag should be tight around box and brush is now in pipe.
7. Place your hand around hole in bag where brush rod is coming thru and grip lightly as you work brush/rod up into pipe. This is so excess creosote/ash does not come back thru hole.
8. If you are using the threaded fiberglass "snap rods" continue adding lengths until you reach the top of the pipe.
9. After you have reached the top and have all of it brushed out, start disassembling rod as you pull it down pipe.
10. When you get to last section of rod, hold onto bag and remove tape from 4 corners of box. Chances are, you have less than a couple pounds of ash in the bag, but just be careful to pull bag down slowly and allow ash to fall to bottom.
11. Take bag, rod, and brush outside, disassemble brush and rod, and dispose of bag.
12. Come back in, reinstall pipe to stove/ceiling box, start fire, and enjoy.

After doing this for the past year, I can enjoy not having to go up on the roof and do it the hard way. This works great for me and I will clean it about every 6-8 weeks.

Good luck.

webby, I have a Magnolia stove. We burn 24/7 during the winter. The Magnolia is a heat producer if cranked, but when temps are not that cold, we let it simmer. We had plans on moving last year so I didn't get the typical wood pile saved up that I normally do. We didn't sell the house like we had planned. Because of this, I have had to buy wood and it is hard to find wood that is "seasoned" around here, and when you do, it is at a premium price. Toward the first of the burning season, temps were mild so the Magnolia "simmered" more than normal. I know it isn't good to do and this has caused an abnormal amount of build up in the pipe. At the first sign of the least bit of build up, the Magnolia tends to let smoke come back out when you open the door. It also causes you to have to run a hotter fire to make it draw.

We didn't really get cold around here until about a month ago. Again, I was buying wood that was only half way seasoned so that has caused us a lot of trouble. When I was burning my own seasoned locust, I would clean it mid season and it would do until spring. We had a few sub zero nights a couple weeks ago so we got to cook a little hotter. Since it has been colder lately, local firewood sellers have been forced to sell what isn't the best quality. They consider seasoned as tree was down in May even though they are just now cutting to length and splitting.

Trust me...I know the difference in truly seasoned but I haven't had much choice. Our house is over 100 years old and we have made insulation improvements where we can, but it wasn't built with insulation in mind like a modern home. If I had to heat without a stove, my electric bill would be over $500 a month during a moderate winter. The sub zero lately would have broke the bank.

Simonkenton, years ago we used to do restaurant exhaust hood cleanings. We used to "bag" the hood on the inside of the kitchen and the tail of the sheet plastic would be routed into a 55 gallon trash can. This way, we could go on the roof, flip the exhaust fan and use a hot pressure washer to clean the fan and duct. We then came inside and would spray the inside of the hood. It was about a 2-3 hour process from start to finish. This is what gave me the idea of bagging the pipe and doing it from inside.

webby3650 said:

It's good that you are able to keep up with it yourself. Having under seasoned wood is terrible! Most people selling wood don't even know what seasoned wood is.

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You got that right. I have had to buy some they claim is seasoned. The only way I can get it to burn is by leaving the door cracked until it gets started. You can open the door 15 minutes after putting it in there and hear it sizzle. My "seasoned" supply is less than a face cord now. I can't afford to buy any more so I am having to ration it. I have a fair amount of cedar that we cut/split a couple months ago. I am having to use it during the day and save the good stuff for nights and in case of any more cold snaps. Like I said, a couple weeks ago, it was colder here than in Alaska. Go figure.