Black fuzz or stage 1 build up

[JrCRXHF]

I have a harmon SF-260 coal/wood boiler. I get about a half of a quart of black fuzz every year when i sweep. The chimney is a triple wall stainless liner in a older gas flue. I also poured insulation around the pipe to keep as much heat in as possible. I get black flake build up on the screen on the top but nothing towards the boiler from there.

I burn 375-450F a night with seasoned wood 18-23%. Most days i turn off the heat on the house when i go to work and then fire the boiler up when i get home and burn 50-125lbs of wood a night to bring the temp back up. I do this so the boiler will get as much wide open burn time as possible.

I don't have room in the boiler room for storage(i only wish i did) is there anything else that i am missing to keep the flue pipe hotter other then burn the boiler hotter. I think when i do go to bed that by 2:00-3:00am the boiler is back to cycling and this might be where i am getting my build up from.

the little spot where there is no insulation on the lower exhaust part is where i take the temps from with a Fluke IR.

 

[pen]

It's that's a pint of creosote per year total, keep doing what you are doing.

That's excellent in my book.

pen

 

[maple1]

+1 on that. With my old unit I sometimes filled a 5 gallon foundation coating bucket with a full chimney (30 ft.) & smoke pipe cleaning. I swept 3 times a year.

 

[JrCRXHF]

Ok i will keep going. The only down side of the metal roof i have on my house is i can not get on the roof to clean out the chimney in the winter. So that is why i worry maybe a little more then i should.

 

[maple1]

A new metal roof on my house two years ago was the final thing that pushed me into dropping the hammer on a gassifier. I had one very close call the first time I swept on the metal two stories up - that stuff is scary slippery even with just a couple drops of water on it.

 

[JrCRXHF]

Yeah i only wish i could get a gasifier. Not much point seeing this one is paid for and was really cheap. If i could have even 1000 gallons of storage it would be different i even thought i would try to figure out a way to sweep from the bottom up but i have not really figured anything out yet.