Why you should have a chimney cap...

[arngnick]

I ussually run my boiler without a cap on the chimney and put a cap on for the summer but sicnce I am going to burn this summer I said I can leave it off. So I got home last night to light a fire and as I was cleaning my secondary chamber I pulled out some ashes along with a bird which came flying at my face...needless to say it scared me pretty good. So not only will a bird build a nest in your chimney looks like they will live in your stove too.

 

[Floydian]

I have had bird issues in the chimney of my wood stove but not my boiler chimney. Reason being, I had to remove the spark arrestor on the wood stove chimney cap because the stove burns rather poorly and the arrestor clogs right up with creosote. On the other hand, the boiler burns so clean that I have no issues with clogging up the arrestor, so I have left it on the cap.

Is your boiler chimney class A or masonry? Personally, I prefer a cap on either.

Noah

 

[arngnick]

Masonry chimney...I will likely put the cap back on I do not it expect any issues because of it. Just a funny story.

(Smae thing with memy old boiler had creosote issues so I took the cap off but I am sure I am good to put it back on just been lazy.)

 

[stee6043]

I found a robin in my chimney this past Spring when I prepped for the first fire. And I have a chimney cap! Suffice to say, this bird did not fly out at me.

 

[maple1]

I have always had a cap - but no screen. We had a birds nest appear in the chimney one summer, then there was this one other time that two bats appeared inside the house out of nowhere when I just happened to not be home - I think I could hear the screaming from 100 miles away though. Don't know for sure, but they must have come in that way. Now that I'm gassifying, I might look into a screened cap - I would have had one of those creosoted over in no time with my old unit.

 

[infinitymike]

And in my thread you wanted me to take my cap off. Nice! Real nice!
Thats exactly why I didn't.
Wish I had a video! I sure you had to clean your other secondary chamber after that one

 

[arngnick]

But you said you did wasn't that bad... still no cap they don't fly in when I am burning

 

[DaveBP]

My father-in-law had a burner man over twice to pull out a dead duck (NOT the same duck) from his oil furnace flue. Ducks?

 

[heaterman]

Yes DUCKS!!

Reminds me of a service call I went on years ago.
The lady on the phone said her carbon monoxide detector was going off and it smelled funny in the house. She lived along a river in a town about a half hour away. When I got there I found an ancient coal/wood-converted to fuel oil-converted to natural gas furnace in her basement. It was the size of a pickup truck.
The furnace fired up fine and the flame looked good so I went around the back of it to check the open draft hood. Sure enough, all the flue gas was pouring out the open hood so I popped the flue connector out of the chimney to see if it was plugged. Looking into the 10" diameter hole it appeared that someone had stuffed a feather pillow into the flue. I went to the truck and got my gloves and soot vac to start excavating the chimney opening.
If I recall correctly, I removed over 30 assorted small birds, 18 pigeons and the remains of 5 ducks. They apparently would sit on the outlet of the chimney in the heat and get overcome by CO. The birds just accumulated at the bottom of the chimney until they had most of the hole plugged off. The gal could not believe it when I hauled about 2 bushel baskets worth of feathers and dead birds up her stairs and outside. She told me the furnace hadn't been looked at in at least 10 years that she knew of. .
Imagine that.

 

[infinitymike]

Heater man.

I love stories like that. It's amazing. That's an example of why to have a cap but more importantly why to have a good working CO detector.
Other wise she would have been a dead duck :-(

 

[BoiledOver]

Wow! What a way to hunt waterfowl........................No license or stamp needed.

 

[Frozen Canuck]

No oven needed either, already wayyyy past done. Wonder how many pics of things like that the sweeps have?

 

[711mhw]

I don't know if this fits in here, but since were talkin chimney's .... I had a buddy that is a bricklayer, he was having troubles with a builder paying him (new const. development work). He started putting a pc. of glass in the chim. in between 2 of the clay liners as he laid it up. When he got paid for that job, he'd climb up on the roof and drop a rock to break the glass. No pay = no rock. He must have done the "fix" when no one was looking.