A lot of ash

After my 1st year of burning wood the chimney sweep stated that the elbow in my outside wall was over 1/2 blocked by a large amount of ash. At the time I attributed this to burning less than ideal wood although the stuff he pulled out was almost entirely ash and not creasote. He completed the cleaning and suggested I pull the pipe out of the elbow in the bottom of the chimney and lean it around mid season...which I did last year around the 3rd week of January. I got some ash but nowhere near the amount he pulled out.

I'm expecting him back soon to brush the chimney and decided to pull the pipe out and see how it looked...it was about 75% blocked up by ash! I removed about a gallon's worth. This seems to be an unusual amount of buildup....Is it possible that the heavy rains we have had since winter have washed down ash from the liner into the elbow?

Some of was damp but the majority was fairly loose. There is a cap...a wire cage about 6" tall that has the cap on top, suggested to me by the chimney guy due to burning oil too. I was very surprised to see that much esp. since I had cleaned it out in January.

I had thought that the drawer under the cyclone piece was meant to catch the ash. I clean that weekly and it has very fine powdery ash in it. My thought is also that the fan is sucking ash into the piping and bypassing the cyclone drawer unit somehow.
I guess I'm ging to need to come up with a very long handled scooper to remove ash from the elbow on a more frequent basis. I will need to access from the T which is about 10' away from where the ash accumulates in the elbow.

Since the piping is all SS I'll need to come up with something made out of anything other than metal?

NCPABill said:

How about sliding a shop vac hose back there? I am guessing that the ash is loose if it doesn't have time to solidify?

How is the storage building coming?


Good luck,

Bill

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I'm not sure my vac hose will be long enough, but it's worth a shot. I'll be calling the WG people sometime today or tomorrow...just wanted to see if anybody else has had this happen.

Just got the "nailers" up this past weekend for the 3 enclosed sides. 2x8's for the roof joists are sitting in my garage for install this weekend if I don't get rained out. As soon as my daughter's bf returns from a hunting trip out west I'll be picking up the metal roofing and then it's time to fill 'er up! Pics to follow, of course. Hope to have it all done by mid October at latest. Already told my friends I'm having a Woodshed Fest soon...similar to Octoberfest but with a little manual labor involved.