2nd stove pipe cleaning, first chimney cleaning any lessons to be learned?

[EatenByLimestone]

I picked up a brush for my masonry chimney with an 8" flue and cleaned it out this week. I've been burning wood for ~2 months now and figured it was time...

Early this month I cleaned the pipe and was absolutely horrified at the amount of creosote that I found. I can see where it really cut down on potential draft.

Today I cleaned the pipe and the chimney was ran up and down a few times. It was surprisingly easy.

With the chimney, there really wasn't much creosote. I scraped some off, but not too much. I'd say it was pretty clean.

The stove pipe was also pretty clean, but had more creosote than the chimney. Why does 4 feet of pipe collect more creosote than 20 feet of chimney? Is the rapid cooling of the single walled pipe the cause of this? Does everybodies setup do this? Lots of questions, because I'm a newbe and figure there is something I can learn from these results.

The difference in the stove performance between the two cleanings can probably be attributed to the new cat. I assume that once the cat is engated, there isn't much that can collect on the stove pipe. The stove was ran more during this month than last so the cat was engaged most of the time. Was the total accumulation from startup and shutdown?


Matt

 

[BrotherBart]

Yeah I believe most of the single wall accumulation comes from start up. Cold pipe, cold flue gases, lots of nasties slowly cooking out of the fresh fed wood. That and the fact that the single wall pipe throws off so much of its heat into the ambient air.