Anti Creosote Sprays

[ChrisWNY]

Do you use an anti creosote spray of some sort in your pellet burner (regularly or intermittently)? Which brand do you use? What are your thoughts?

Anti-Creosote sprays are usually a liquid manganese, and environmentally friendly, as well as non-toxic, not that I recommend drinking the stuff. You can usually find them at big box home stores, or fireplace stores, prices ranging from $8-$20 something depending on the size of the spray bottle.

I use ACS Anti Creo-soot spray especially toward the end of every burn season. I tend to vacuum out my Fahrenheit pellet furnace almost daily when April rolls in, so I soak the inside of the firebox and the exhaust vent inside the furnace with this stuff (probably 30-40 good sprays, until it's dripping within the firebox), after vacuuming, until the bottle is completely gone. Then I go ahead and get a fire going shortly after soaking the inside of the firebox.

Seems to work well - when I use the rotary brush inside my 4" stainless PL vent, the ash loosens up nicely then I use the leaf blower method to pull out the ash and send it into the corn field next to my home during the end-of-season clean-out (whenever it begins to become consistently warm, usually by late April in WNY). All I ever see is white/gray ash, I haven't yet dealt with any nasty creosote build-up in my PL vent.

 

[johneh]

Never had creosote in my pellet stove have never seen a stove with it
Only if the stove is burning improperly would you get
Just my 2 cents worth

 

[bogieb]

Don't use any anti-creosote anything. Never had an issue. Ash has always been easy to dislodge for me. I am pretty much in the same camp as what @johneh said.

 

[ChrisWNY]

I don't use the spray for removing creosote as much as I do for simply keeping the firebox and exhaust areas a little cleaner than they'd likely be with no spray at all. I've never had creosote build up anywhere, but after this season of burning 16 bags of horrendous North American pellets, I wanted to make sure I took all precautions. The sprays advertise that they help to reduce corrosion as well as ash throughout the system.

 

[alternativeheat]

I see no signs of creosote in my Harman or the vent and I burned even more North Americans than you did. All I saw in that time was a little darker ash than usual, cleaned right up. Even the dark ash on the door glass came right off. Non issue, though I may or may not buy those pellets again.

Course I don't know how your furnace runs either, the Harman's maintain a pretty steady stack temp. A cool burn is usually the reason for creosote, stack temps too cool, the gasses cool and condense forming the sludge, dripping black goo etc. All I ever get from my stove and vent is basically powder, sometimes some granules of ash..

 

[rona]

If you would run your stove on high for a couple hours it would destroy the creosote. Usually creosote is caused by low flame burning rich. and you should be able to get rid of it but running the stove at a high temp for a short time.

 

[gfreek]

On my Harman, I use it occasionally on the end of the auger, it tends to get built up of carbon or creosote. More so this winter, not being so cold, not burning on high so much..

 

[smwilliamson]

Gimmick