Chimney

[eunger1]

New to this forum/site. Hopefully i'm posting this right. We bought our first home & It came with a quadra-fire castile pellet stove. We have basically had it running every day since December. This might be a stupid question but.... How often should the chimney be cleaned? Is it ok until after the winter? I live in western NY so that could be a couple more months. It was cleaned before winter.

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[jackman]

There's a few factors that contribute to how often it needs to be cleaned, e.g., how much you burn, the quality of the pellets, how hot it burns, etc. I clean mine whenever I do a deep clean about twice a year or about every 2 tons.

 

[eunger1]

We have used a ton of pellets so far. My worst fear is a house fire so I'm all about making sure this thing is clean and properly working.

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[eunger1]

I don't know how to tell how hot it is burning. I'm a total newb. We bought the house from my grandparents. I didn't change any settings that my grandpa had set.

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[jackman]

You're probably fine. You may want to give the forum members a few more particulars about your installation. I own a different model stove so I'm not familiar with yours. You mention a chimney so I'm guessing it's a pellet insert with a vent liner installed. Unlike a traditional fireplace pellet stoves do not build up creosote in the vent. But you do need to make sure that the ash does not build up in the vent and limit the exhaust. When that happens the stove will usually shut down on its own.

I hope that helps and welcome to the forum. Hopefully, others with your same stove will chime in and help you further.

 

[eunger1]

Hopefully this picture will show up. This is what it looks like.

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[tbear853]

I've had my pellet stove since 1992, it vents straight out the back through a side wall and to a TEE with one leg up, one leg down. The up leg has 15 feet of straight pipe to well above the eave and a Pellet Vent cap on it. The down leg has a removable cap on it and seems to act like a "drip leg" on a gas line. In all these years, never found any build up that was flammable, just a black soot. The soot is light and fluffy and messy .... I run a couple shop vac hoses up it when the lower cap is off. When I take that lower cap off, I find some loose ash and residue in it that the draft can't carry up. I also use a small shop vac hose and run it back in towards the stove, I get mostly soot and some little ash. Vent is 3" diameter stainless steel lined insulated PEL VENT.

Like said above, never seen anything that could catch fire like in a fireplace or wood stove flue. Looking at your pic, I'd say you are gonna find trash at the back of the stove before the up pipe when you do clean it out, so have stuff covered.

 

[alternativeheat]

A lot of us around the forum do a mid season and end of season vent cleaning , or else a beginning season and mid season cleaning, based on about 4 tons of pellets burned per year, so every couple of tons. In some areas of the country people burn more like 6 tons over a winter and others only one or two tons, obviously then the vent cleaning would vary. The type and quality of pellets burned offer another variable. If someone for instance burned Douglas Fur pellets all year, they probably could clean the venting annually and that's it. Cheap/low quality if that 's the case and dirty ( I've also seen inexpensive but very clean pellets), really ashy pellets you might want to clean the vent after each ton. 3" vent vs 4"venting offers another variable, I run 4" which allows for a bit of extension on my vent cleaning times.

Your stove internals probably will require cleaning every couple of weeks, with a lighter general brushing down inside weekly. This depends on the actual stove and once again pellet quality. The good news is it doesn't cost anything to clean your stove and doing so rewards you with good service from the stove.

It can happen that a pellet stove has a venting fire, it's rare and unusual but it has happened. You may read about a house fire caused by a pellet stove now and then, usually someone posts photos from a fire about once every winter or so, or an article. Usually attributed to something wrong, either with the stove, or the install is improper ( most often the case). One such article that probably stands out to many of us here was a 21 room rooming house fire in Maine where a pellet furnace was installed with an incorrect through the wall thimble. Burned to the ground but everyone got out. That does not account for the thousands of safe running pellet stoves with no fire in sight what so ever , except in the fire box, so sleep peacefully ! As mentioned , generally all you get from the venting is ash/soot/powdery dust, call it as you wish but not creosote ( the cause of chimney fires), not even carbon chunks. I get a very slight little puddle of what could be termed tar or gum in the bottom of my clean out Tee, the coldest part of my vent which runs up 26 ft via stainless steel vent liner through an existing chimney. The most likely scenario of a vent that needs cleaning or is over due I should say, is a sluggish fire in the stove and no heat output, soon to be followed by the stove shutting down from lack of vacuum due to the limited air flow.

In your install and not knowing what goes on beyond that brick fascia that your venting enters into, you should find the majority of your ash build up right in those pipes you can see. The first ten feet or so of venting collect the most of it, with little pockets of it the rest of the way up . Hopefully there is a clean out tee at the back of the stove, that would make running a brush and flex rods up that portion of your vent much easier than disconnecting pipes. At this point in time we don't know if your chimney has a stainless liner in it or if it is masonry but either way that will need periodic cleaning as well.

 

[bogieb]

What brand of pellets are those? If their ThermaGlo's (which are trash pellets and have a tan bag), I would say you need to clean that vent at least every ton (experience talking here). If they are really good pellets, you will probably be okay thru the winter. If they are middling pellets (FSU-type), then every couple of tons will probably be good.

 

[alternativeheat]

I see in the photo a Tidy Cat container, can't make out what the pellets are. I burned some ThermaGlo recently, more ash than Maine Wood TSC pellets and not as hot.