Chimney cleaning "stuff"

muncybob said:

just under 2 gallons of ash he removed!

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Are you serious? 2 Gallons?

muncybob said:

Since I've never done it before, I hired the same guy that installed my liner to give our chimney it's first cleaning. Fairly happy with the apprx. just under 2 gallons of ash he removed considering we used less than ideal wood last year. The cleaning process is not exactly rocket science so I figure going forward I'll do it myself and save the $100+ per year fee.
What would be the best resources out there to acquire my cleaning gear? I liked what he had which was a nylon brush for 6" liner and extension rods that were all contained in a tube with a strap for easy transport up to the roof. The roof to basement is about 32'.
He stated that I should probably at least clean out the basement piping that goes into the chimney around mid season.

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http://www.mcmaster.com/#chimney-brushes/=94pn4p

Scroll down to "Duct and Flue Threaded Shank Brushes" I have a 6 and 1/2" round poly brush for my 6" chimney. The brush goes in good and snug and gives the walls a good scrub being 1/2" oversize. I also got the matching fiberglass rods (near the bottom)-48" long, so if I were you I'd buy 9-that way you always have a decent amount of rod to hold onto. Last I bundled my rods with duct tape before I went up on the roof-I like the tube idea though. Time for a trip to Lowes for some PVC and fittings...

Wow 2 gallons. that's a lot even for 32 feet? I don't know how easy your chimney is to get at, but I'd check it monthly this year and definitely give it a cleaning mid season, if not more. I know you said your wood was less than ideal, but do it for a good baseline if you have good wood this year, then next year you can rest easy knowing whether or not it needs to be cleaned that often.

muncybob said:

Danno77 said:

Wow 2 gallons. that's a lot even for 32 feet? I don't know how easy your chimney is to get at, but I'd check it monthly this year and definitely give it a cleaning mid season, if not more. I know you said your wood was less than ideal, but do it for a good baseline if you have good wood this year, then next year you can rest easy knowing whether or not it needs to be cleaned that often.

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Well, it was a 5 gallon bucket and just over 1/3 full of stuff. But, I was thinking the same to inspect often this year and def. clean in mid to late January or so.

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shudda burned that ASH to get an idea of its fuel value. assume the ash was non flammable like from pellet stove, then the ash was a layer of insulation for the chimney?

Hmmm . . . 2 gallons seems to be quite a bit.

I bought my nylon brush and rods through Northlineexpress.com . . . they were/are one of the hearth.com advertisers . . . no fancy schmancy case or anything, but the brush and rods work well and get the job done and the price was right.

I picked-up a 6" poly brush ($14) and 6 rods ($7 each) at Menards. 6 rods was just enough to do the approx 24' down to the stove (brush gives you another 6-8"). A caution against the 1/2" oversized brush: With your 32' run, those rods aren't very stiff & they'll be bending & flopping all over the place trying to push a stiff 6 1/2" brush down the bottom 10'. Easier to take more passes with a 6" brush IMO. I base this on my 1'st time cleaning this weekend when it was a pain pushing the 6" brush through the 'home-ovalized' bottom half of my liner.
You can also get a rope on the end & pull the brush down, but now that 2 gallons of ash & creo is all over you & the house.

I hire somebody too. He works from the stove up. Is it better to go top down? Why?
Maybe I will look into buying the stuff too.

Flatbedford said:

I hire somebody too. He works from the stove up. Is it better to go top down? Why?
Maybe I will look into buying the stuff too.

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top of chimni is coldest part & collects most creosote. if u dont see it u dont know

I as well purchased my brush and rods from Northlineexpress.com. Being a fairly new burner I err on the side of caution. First year, swept evry 4-6 weeks, only to find about a cup and a half of soot. Usually twice a year I will go 2-3 times from the bottom and head up to the roof to inspect the cap and then pull the brush down twice.


Be safe.

KC

I ordered my Rutland 6" poly brush from Amazon for around $11 shipped. The rods I picked up at Lowes. The tube sounds like something used to carry rolled up drawings, so try office supply or hobby stores.

Im super cheap, so i bought 10' sections of 1/2 PVC electrical conduit, a glue on 1/2 to 1/2 NPT union, and a 1/2 NPT to 1/4 steel reducer and use that. Works great and it cost me all of $3.25 and my local hardware store.

I am gonna assume that not all of that ash came from your flue - perhaps he got some from cleaning the fire box too? Nooks and cranies? Maybe that's why he got what he got?

That is alot. I went 2 years and he barely got a coffee cup full from my flue ( 2 story). I cleaned my own fire box.

The first year, I used a mirror to look up mine and saw it was still shiny and new looking without any creasote or soot - so I waited til this year. Sweep said I was burning good wood and hot fires! I liked hearing that.

Thrash44047 said:

Im super cheap, so i bought 10' sections of 1/2 PVC electrical conduit, a glue on 1/2 to 1/2 NPT union, and a 1/2 NPT to 1/4 steel reducer and use that. Works great and it cost me all of $3.25 and my local hardware store.

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That's an interesting approach, Thrash. I wanted a set of rods that I could use to clean from the bottom at the thimble. But for this to work, I'm limited to 2 1/2' rod sections, due to thimble size and depth. I'm cheap too, and didn't want to pay lots of $ for the flexible ones, and I'm not comfortable that the SootEater can do as well as a chimney brush. So I decided to try sections of 3/16 threaded rod, joined by couplings. I wanted to be sure that there would be no chance of a disconnect, leaving the brush in a bad spot. I have all the parts, and was planning on doing the job this weekend, but the conduit sounds like maybe a better choice, mainly due to the lower weight. But, I would be a bit concerned about one of the plastic parts breaking. The stuff is strong, but the designer probably wasn't planning on the stresses of being used as an extended push rod. Do you see any way for the sections to separate or anything to break while working the brush? I've got a 6x11" flue - if your flue is smaller it's probably not much of an issue with less side-to-side motion of the conduit.
For the OP, I'm also a Northlineexpress.com shopper, and they have been very good.

I bought the SootEater last year and was very happy with it. You can do it from the bottom up, works like a weedeater that you put on a drill. You can also use it from the top down, but I think it works great and nice to not have to get up on the chimney. I wrote a post about it last year.

I use the real light duty hitch pin clips (http://www.tractorsupply.com/agricu...-pin-clip-1-8-in-x-2-1-2-in-pack-of-4-0269303) to hold the sections together. I attached the sections, drilled them using a 5/32" drill and then pushed the clip thru. The conduit is pretty sturdy Ive dropped it off my roof, with 12x12 brush attached and it didn't break. Not sure if you could bend around a 90° elbow, flexability wise, but for general cleaning they hold up well. I get pretty silly with pushing side to side and haven't broken them yet. One bit of advice mark the sections with paint, sharpie or etch the section # on the connections so you get the holes lining up each time. I didn't measure or mark the first time and had a whopper of a time sorting out the pcs. I clean top down so I only need 2-10'ers but I made 3.

Now I do like your idea as well. You could just put a jam nuts on both sides of the couplers so that they don't come apart. Either way ya go good luck this weekend.

I also use the 10' PVC grey electrical conduit sections to clean my chimney from the roof. I sanded the male ends around the outside to make a looser fit with the female ends, which makes attaching the sections infinitely easier. I use 1/4" bolts to hold the sections together. If the holes are sufficiently oversized and are drilled pretty well centered and the same distance from the ends, the pieces are all interchangeable and marking is unnecessary. Wing nuts would be best, but last year I just used regular nuts and it worked fine. It is easy to attach the sections this way. (Test it out for ease of connection on the ground). The PVC is plenty strong enough and I use three sections to push a wire brush down 27'. I have absolutely no fear of the PVC breaking. My concern is the threaded white PVC adapter near the brush. That would be the weak point in the system. I know this from having made a lot of windsock poles of PVC and connecting them to a metal base. Ideally I would like to make a beefier threaded connection to the brush, but it has worked fine so far.

White pvc adapter. Hmmm I use a gray one, used for connecting 1/2" steel to 1/2" pvc, conduit. Then a galvanized steel reducer. The gray PVC is, IMO, much stronger. I used the larger 1/2" glue to 1/2" NPT adapter because the threads are much stronger in the plastic.

When I made the system last year I just used what I had on hand, including the grey conduit that I had for windsock poles and the white threaded piece. I just now went out to the barn to look to see what the size of the reducer was and noticed that it is already cracked through lengthwise from three cleanings! Thanks for the tip about the grey PVC threaded piece. I may look for one of those. But I think that for maximum strength and minimum worries about it breaking in the chimney I will look for or make something of metal that can slide inside of or over the grey 1/2" conduit piece and also thread onto the brush or onto the brass reducer that is on it now. Then I can drill and bolt through it and the conduit and have no worries about it breaking. The actual distance that the threaded PVC goes into the threaded metal is sometimes not far enough to make me feel comfortable about its strength in this type of use, even with the grey stuff.

By the way, I got the idea for using the conduit as chimney cleaning rods from this forum last winter, possibly from you, so thanks for the idea if it was yours!

I use the 1/2" NPT plastic then put a 1/2" NPT male to 1/4 NPT (what is on my brush) female into it its quite sturdy, done about 6 cleanings. Ill try to get some pics.

Well, as I sort of expected, cleaning the chimney bottom-up with threaded rods didn't work. I tried 3/8 allthread joined with couplers, but it became fairly heavy after 12 pieces (2' long each). That wasn't a surprise, but the metal smacking the chimney walls due to oscillation was what actually caused me to hit the brakes. Relining the chimney is definitely not in the budget. So, I returned the like-new rod and bought 1/2" grey conduit, M/F threaded connectors, and built 15, 25" sections, M on one end and F on the other. I also found an inexpensive brass 3/8-1/4 MIP half union (Watts A-182) that threaded itself perfectly into the 1/2 conduit, and reinforced it with a small hose clamp. I attached the 1/2 MIP thread to my brush with a Watts A-732 Pipe Coupling. The whole tab was around $12. Threading the sections inside of the chimney thimble is a PITA, but after lots of grunt work this setup did finally get the 32' chimney cleaned from the bottom. One caution to others using the conduit is that lots of oscillation will stress this plastic. I have a 6/11" flue, and side-to-side motion of the rod can't be avoided. After doing 2 passes (an undersized and full-sized brush), one of the sections failed during the last scrub back down. The glued joint was solid, but the rod broke just below the coupling. I'm going to think about the plan for the next cleaning, because it would not be a happy thing to have a bunch of broken sections each time. Hate the thought of paying the big bucks for fiberglass rods, but it may come to that. I'll also try to find out if anyone has successfully cleaned anything like a 32' 6x11" flue with a SootEater. Also, here's something I picked up from a prior thread. Attaching a rope to the top of the brush provides piece of mind when using the conduit approach. The rope gets tied to the loop at the top and is pushed towards the middle, and then gets tied again to the brush shaft at the bottom. This will bail you out if the conduit fails and the brush gets hung up in mid chimney.

Another Northline Express customer. Two years ago I bought seven 4-foot long .440" diameter rods and a 7-inch round steel brush for about $130 delivered. I brush once before the season and once sometime about halfway through though I could probably get away from that given our specific situation; we are only a couple of years into this setup so I want to make sure everything is fine. We burn about 7 cords a year. The previous owner told us to fill a mason jar with ammonia and place it in the clean out. Not sure if it helps or if it converts NOx to N2 but I can say almost all of the ash in the clean out is there prior to sweeping.

Will, For that long of a chimney, I may have went with the 3/4" conduit. I will give you a bit more deflective strength. I also wouldn't use threaded connections on the unions between the sections, but thats me and its your project. If you cross bolt, like Dave stated, or pin as I have stated, the cross bolt/pin will actually give a bit of a pivot point and relieve some of the stress from the bending of that will occur. With the threaded connection you have a very rigid connection, and the PVC glue will weaken, to a point, the PVC just below the joint, increasing the chance of a fracture.

I have some other real whacked ideas on the breakage/ separation issue but I don't want everyone to laugh so Ill keep those to myself.

Ahhh the joys of being cheap.

Another plug for the sooteater. Bought mine based on recommendations here. Cleaned all 3 chimneys yesterday in an afternoon.

BTW like everybody says that 2 gallons of soot is concerning. I got maybe 2 pint glasses worth out of my 18ft pipe from last season and we also had really marginal (25-30%) first year wood.