Creosote pics

dry and powdery equals pretty good burn, nothing wrong i can see

I don't know... that's a lot more than I would expect with a stove like yours. My elbow looks spotless by comparison, and I have an old non-EPA stove. I'd say it's wet wood and low-temperature burning that caused that. Or maybe you're shutting the stove down way too soon. If your wood was bucked and split in Sept, it didn't get very dry. Log lengths don't dry that much, even in a year. If you haven't been force-drying your wood inside then I'd suspect it's wetter than 30% in the middle. You need to burn wood that wet in a big, hot fire or you will create lots of creosote.

Brush that gunk out good and start every day with a good hot fire from now on. 600º flue pipe temp for half an hour in the morning should burn off what you build up the day before. Split your wood small and bring as much inside the house as you can. It should dry up a fair bit after about a week in the dry inside air.

Looking at the photo, it appears normal.

normal for 1.5 cords of mixed fuel, imo

Mine looked like that to,just brush it out and keep using it.looks normal to me.Does that single wall piping connect to your furnance flue when you had it in your basement.

BrotherBart said:

My connector pipes and elbows always look like that. Well, except for season end when I pull'em and brush'em. A job I hate.

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Really?

I've never cleaned my own chimney, but this was the first year with this stove. I decided to pull the pipe and take a look-see up the chimney with a mirror about 2 weeks ago. I considered the main flue to be worse than I had hoped to find it, but better than I feared it might be. The pipe and elbow, however, were so clean I didn't even bother to brush them out. That was after over 2 cord burned. I only have a 30" vertical run before the elbow, so it may be that it's just a lot hotter there than some folks get. Or maybe it's those daily chimney fires I've been setting.

My pipe several feet up from the stove collar had a light coating of light brown powder. This was after approx 3 cords of well seasoned and semi seasoned mixed hardwoods, Oak, Maple, Cherry and Locust. Only further up the flue and in the cap area at the top is it black with a thicker coating. Based on what i'm seeing here I guess maybe i'm not damping down enough sending more heat up the flue..

As a new burner I'm finding it hard to get the damp down process just right and I guess i'm not damping down enough thus loosing some valuable heat up the flue.. I guess i'm a bit scared that if I damp down to fast I will clog the flue with creasote. I'll tell ya it takes some serious trial and error to get it just right.. Still trying here..

bren582 said:

I guess i'm a bit scared that if I damp down to fast I will clog the flue with creasote. I'll tell ya it takes some serious trial and error to get it just right.. Still trying here..

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My stove has a reputation for being a major creosote factory, mostly because people often installed it in tiny living rooms and such and had to almost shut down the air completely to stop from roasting themselves alive. This is my first season with this stove, so I wanted to avoid the creosote as much as possible. Maybe I should experiment with closing the air down even more.

I keep reading about folks brushing out a couple cups of brown powder from their flues. Then I think back to when I first started to burn in this house almost 20 years ago. I thought I was being pretty cagey about using a key damper closed just short of smoke backing out the pipe to get my little stove to smolder away and have a nice bed of coals in the morning. I also think back to the end of that first season, and the sweep yelling at me while holding up a 5-gallon bucket of creosote. :ahhh: Ever since then, I always err on the hot side of burning.

remember dry soot and tarry creosote are not the same animal

Soot is all carbon and non-volatile - sort of like charcoal and is difficult to ignite.

Creosote is shiny - sort of gooey - quite volatile. It is dangerous and catches fire easily. To avoid it, build and burn your fires hot.

Aye,
Marty

It does not look real bad but I will say that if our chimney ever gets to that point we are cleaning it fast. I simply do not like the chimney looking like that and it takes so little time to clean that chimney.

I cleaned our chimney last spring and after 2 years burning our chimney shinned compared to that one pictured!

You folks say it is normal but I say it is not, especially after only 1 1/2 cords of wood.

it looks fine to me too. the powder is what you're after anyway...as marty said its the black shiny sticky stuff you want to watch out for.

cass

Sleepy,

Most of your wood was not fully seasoned. It will now only get better. Just move ahead your splitting and stacking
schedule a bit, for longer seasoning time. It is very good that you now have an inspection and cleaning routine.

Enjoy your stove and burn safely.

I cleaned my connectors after almost 4 cords about 2weeks ago. My stove's a rear exhaust 90'd into a 40" connector with a barometric damper 90'd into a thimble through the foundation int an utility chimney. My connectors had maybe 1/3 to 1/2 as much build up. I was concearned that my set up would have been gummed up because I had burned a lot of pine in my stove. It gets the fire going quickly and gets the hard wood burning faster. I light a roaring fire in the mornings: flue temps 500-600 to burn off any build up. I also use Rutland's kwick shot, one per week to prevent build up. My chimney was as clean as a whystle. I'm new at this, but with your wood being on the wet side, I would burn that thing hot at leat a couple hours a day. I'm no expert but I wouldn't be too concearned with that much build up. I split my wood in the summer, only about three months before you did. So I guess 3-4 months can make a big difference. Good luck and burn on!