Lets have a quick look up the pipe and run the brush over it while we're in there...

[mdocod]

It's been about 3 months since we switched to single wall pipe on this system, 2 months since it was swept, and about a month since the last I poked a light up and had a look. Daily burning. Lets have a look at how things are going.

Time to make a bit of a mess...

Looks like the inside of a wood stove pipe to me...

The usual sooty deposits on the walls from pitch rich ponderosa burning.
Mostly fluffy stuff that's falling off and floats down as soon as I start moving the stove pipe.

The cold bottom of the chimney cap looks a bit shiny!

Gave it a once over with the Wohler 9413 Viper with a soft 8" poly brush while holding the vacuum hose a few inches up the pipe to gather most of the slowly falling sooty ash.

I'm not seeing anything too concerning here. Mostly fluffy, a little bit of gritty material came down with the brush that was too heavy to be gathered by the tiny vacuum off to the side of the pipe, mostly from the chimney cap as it was gently bumped by the tip of the star.

Thoughts? Concerns?

How often would you sweep this? I'm thinking once every 2-3 months of burning should be plenty.

 

[Poindexter]

I _think_ your cleaning interval can be a little bit longer, but I would like a pic of whatever you collected in the shop-vac. A "few" shiny black bits is un-avoidable...

 

[mdocod]

I _think_ your cleaning interval can be a little bit longer, but I would like a pic of whatever you collected in the shop-vac. A "few" shiny black bits is un-avoidable...

Thanks for the cleaning interval perspective.

I completely forgot to take that photo of what came out. Proceeded to vacuum the ash out of the stove so it's all mixed up now.

 

[Poindexter]

The amount of crunchy black bits is the key to me. I didn't see any wet sticky black goo, a major plus. If you got one part crunchy black to 19 parts fluffy grey you can probably go quite a bit longer.

 

[bholler]

The conditions in the chimney look very good. I wouldn't be scared to run a whole year after seeing that

 

[Todd]

Looks good, if it were me I’d sweep once per year. How did the cat look?

 

[mdocod]

Looks good, if it were me I’d sweep once per year. How did the cat look?

Honestly they looked like I could eat off of them. Cleanest they have been in any inspection since getting the stove...

It's taken some time to figure out a burning strategy but I think I'm there. When starting the stove from cold, it needs about 30-45 minutes of rigorous full throttle burn to heat the whole system up and clean everything up. I've found that from a cold start, EGT's will stabilize at ~800F while the stove is still warming up for the duration of that 30-45 minute burn with the air control wide open. When loading on a bed of coals just let it get to 800F then choke it down and it will hold a steady fire from there. In each case, after choking down to a low burn setting EGT's settle down to ~600F after awhile.