Help Creosote: To brush or not? PICS

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jwfrazier

New Member
Oct 5, 2008
16
Jefferson, GA
Hi,

Everyone here got me up and running last year. I really appreciate the help.

After burning some pretty green wood for the first part of last year, the wood got drier as I went along. I never got around to cleaning my liner last year. When I took the bottom cap off of my liner tee yesterday, I had about a half gallon of black charcoal like substance (creosote?) fall out. It was all loose and at the bottom. There remains a fine grey powder attached to the walls of the liner, but it is much less than I expected.

Does it look like to ya'll that I need to sweep/brush this liner, or not? It doesn't look like enough to catch on fire to me, but I'm inexperienced in these things. I don't have enough room to brush it from the bottom, and I will need to get up on the 35' tall chimney, and remove the chimney cap to do it (no easy task).

On the pic below you can see that I brushed about the bottom 2 feet that I could reach. The rest of the liner has the same grey powder; I can see all the way to the top.

Thanks again,

John
 

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It's up top that you need to check, where the chimney is exposed to the outside. Could be ok, but you won't know until you check topside.
 
Brush. You will likely have more at the top, where it is cooler (the black stuff probably trickled down from up there - the lighter, powdery stuff is usually where the pipe is hottest, near the bottom).
 
Yep check at the top as unfun as it is. With my old stove after the cat died I would get over 2 gallons of that black creosote every two weeks. At the bottom it was like you have in the picture up at the top it was glazed on tar. Part of the reason I needed to replace the old stove. Some of that might be from the chimeny cap they seem to get gunked up first and the worst.
 
When in doubt, brush that crap out.
 
I cleaned mine a few weeks back, first time after burning a full year. I found it was clean as a wistle on the upper insulated pipe but the single wall stuff had a small layer of black on them. And the cap was gross, I still had the mesh on the cap and proceeded to throw that in the garbage. I think in all about 1/2 gallon, maybe a little more.
 
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