Sticky vent pipe

I did my every other week vent cleaning and found sticky creosote in the last few feet of my exhaust. Never had it before the only changes to the stove are my OAK put in between this year and last. I know someone will ask 3" pipe evl of 14. I let the stove go 2 weeks without touching it was dirty of course but the fire looked fine. Maybe a little too ashed up and bad airflow? Or could it be the damp air coming in from the OAK. The rest of the stove is dry and gray/brown ash.

i think it was Eric that mentioned he didnt like that selerik vent/oak could cool exhaust causing creosote

No Selkirk on mine but the 3' horizantal run does go out thru an unheated closet but I have a piece of 8" stove pipe around the vent pipe to maintain clearances if anything should inadvertantly get leaned against it. I just noticed my feed rate must have gotten bumped up from 4 to 4 1/2 could that be enough to cause it?

Even though your feed rate was bumped up thats just the maximum feed the stove will do. I doubt you have been running up against the feed limit unless you forgot to close the front door on your way to work or something crazy like that.

How good are your gaskets?

How much of the vent is outside?

Gaskets all pass the dollar bill test and about 18" of the vent are outside. I can't tell how far down it's sticky but I'm guessing all the way to the inside 90 degree elbow. I'm begining to think that it's from the weather, running hard at night and just simmering all day. It's got to be from low exhaust temp. The ESP has never been replaced and have a spare I will see what next week brings and if it's not better I'll swap it out and see if that helps. I will be doing a vent cleaning every week until I see the stickies gone.

OMV, good job paying attention to detail.

Neil, What exactly is your venting configuration?

i know he didnt have that pipe but he mentioned his OAK concern so i made a reference

Sorry about the delay, it seems to be Christmas light day at our house. Stove adapter, clean out tee, 4 foot vertical, a 90, 3 foot horizontal(actually 1" rise/foot). Sorry re-did the math EVL = 15

same pellets?

Yup, anyway same brand Pennywise, and no problems before this cleaning.

I hear you on the Christmas light day, the boss started decorating today and that means she gets a mess in every room cleaning the other rooms and getting stuff out.

I just checked my lights out, they all worked, eldest daughter will get her choice of what she wants of them except for what I need for the tree, window candles, and a few replacement lights. I think that should result in a large plastic bin getting freed up.

Not putting anything outside this year.

Putting lights up are bad enough but taking them down really ruins the 4th of July.

That's the day I take the snowblower outside and check it over and crank it up just to scare the neighbors.

We have one of those wire-frame snowmen, about 5' tall, for outside. I decided to get it working this year, and found 45 bad bulbs Took me the whole evening to get it working. I had a pile of spare bulbs from an old light string, otherwise wouldn't have bothered. I hope it was worth the effort...

When I have a light string break I carefully remove all of the bulbs and put them into a plastic bag as spares. I think I have close to 500 spare miniature bulbs now just in case. That plastic bin contains those along with at least 25 strings of lights all working.

Over the years we went from multicolored to all white miniature lights and 10 years or so ago I started replacing them with leds still all white.

There is a 42 year old snowman that takes a regular medium based light bulb in the closet. I might put a CFL in it and place it in the patio door to the back deck, our Grand Daughter was asking about it a couple of weeks ago.

That old snowman will probably be one of Grand Daughter's nice memories from childhood.