I just had my buddy run the brush through my liner through my chimney for my insert. Just wanted to know how much soot or black dust should I have in my stove to take out. I probably have about enough to fill about half a 5 gallon spackle bucket. Is this bad? I clean my liner every year at this time am never sure what is an aceptable amount.
question on chimney cleaning
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I will let the pros chime in on this one. IMO, I think that seems to be a significant amount. How tall is your chimney? That certainly factors in since the amount of soot/creosote is dependant on several factors (moisture content in wood being the biggest) but also how much chimney you have. Wet wood and a 14 foot chimney will have less soot than wet wood and a 30 foot chimney (all other factors being equal).
Andrew
Andrew
My first impression is that's a bit much. Most newer inserts I sweep with a full liner will result in about a coffee can's worth. What kind of insert do you have? Do you have a full liner? Is it insulated? Is your wood nice and dry?
The answer's to cmon's questions will be a big help in understanding the problem.
Also, what did the creosote look like? Brown and dusty? Black and flaky like small cornflakes? Any big sheets? Any stuff that looks like peanut brittle but black and 1/2 dollar size? etc.
pen
Also, what did the creosote look like? Brown and dusty? Black and flaky like small cornflakes? Any big sheets? Any stuff that looks like peanut brittle but black and 1/2 dollar size? etc.
pen
cmonSTART said:
Nope. This wood doesn't sound like it's seasoned that great either. Better than many, but could still be part of the problem depending on how it's cut, split, stacked.
pen
Brown and sooty is better than black. 2.5 gallons of creosote is a lot of fuel in there if something were to take off.
If I were in this spot I'd:
1. Clean more often
2. Try and get further ahead on the wood so that it's drier. 1 year for many woods is really about the minimum IMO. Oak and less than perfect stacking locations can increase that to 2 years plus. Drier wood means you use less and have a cleaner chimney.
3. Remove what is sealing the top of this liner to the existing chimney and use vermiculite or perlite to surround and insulate the liner.
If you decide to make no changes to what you are doing I'd recommend a mid season cleaning at the minimum.
pen
If I were in this spot I'd:
1. Clean more often
2. Try and get further ahead on the wood so that it's drier. 1 year for many woods is really about the minimum IMO. Oak and less than perfect stacking locations can increase that to 2 years plus. Drier wood means you use less and have a cleaner chimney.
3. Remove what is sealing the top of this liner to the existing chimney and use vermiculite or perlite to surround and insulate the liner.
If you decide to make no changes to what you are doing I'd recommend a mid season cleaning at the minimum.
pen
NextEndeavor
Burning Hunk
For what it's worth from one single season of burning: I got a 12 oz pop can worth of flaky black stuff each of three total cleanings with a 16 ft chimney. My wood was mainly red oak and mostly too wet so i mixed a third of many loads with very dry hedge. Last year I ran a steep learning curve going 24/7 and tried to keep the stove top between 400 and 600 degrees when around and able to properly tend it. This years wood will tremendously better.
pen said:
And how are you counting the 9-10 months? The time needs to be counted only after the wood has been split and stacked. Then this begs the question, how and where is it stacked? It needs to be outdoors in the wind. Also please realize that you can not make a blanket statement as to how long wood needs to dry because different types of wood take different amounts of time to properly dry. Cut oak and burn it in 9 - 10 months and you are asking for some big problems.
fwiw, we've cleaned our chimney once in the last 4 years and got about a cup of soot. Nothing black.
We have hickory and maple and it was split and stacked in early March in the dead sun and wind no cover til October
Backwoods Savage said:
Dennis, that line right there is a testament to having properly seasoned wood. I had to read it twice.
The wood combination you mentioned seems reasonable with the amount of time you had to dry it, no oak in the mix. However, with that wood you got way too much out of your chimney when the sweep came. I wonder if a poor draft would be part of the problem?tumm21 said:
One thing I haven't seen mentioned, are you burning hot enough? Smoldering? Sounds like your not burning hot enough IMO.
Sounds like quite a bit of creosote . . . not much more to add other than to agree with Pen, Backwoods and N3pro . . . clean more often, burn seasoned wood and burn at the correct temps. I think in cleaning my chimney I might get one coffee can full of brown creosote.
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