Creosote Frame of Reference

[30WCF]

I don’t have a personal community to draw from.
I started out cleaning my chimney twice a year, then went to once a year.
Granted, I’m a weekender.
Is this guy clueless and in danger of torching his house and neighborhood down, or is he within spec?
I can sweep once a year and have no resistance except when changing direction and having to compress the bristles to do so. I might start with some intermittent scale, and return to almost a mirror finish.
This guy had fins growing inward in his chimney, laying full body weight on his rods, dumping creosote all over his rooftop, and he says it’s usually worse. Is that normal and I’m OCD if I scrub the heck out of some freckling once, maybe twice a year?
If this is normal, I can relax.

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I sometimes think about how could a chimney sweep ( Mary Poppins) be/have been a full time job, but with wet wood and a bad stove, maybe.

 

[Eman85]

He starts of saying he burns pine and it's a steel basic stove. Common to see buildup like that depending on what I burn and if I burn my stove without the cat and damper it down I'll build creosote. I have had what looks like black styrofoam on my chimney cap. My chimney is like his and it's on the short side. Even when it's dirty my brush pushes right down and the hard part is reversing the steel bristles.

 

[begreen]

It's not the pine. Pine does not cause creosote. The wood is not well seasoned and he may be smoldering it in the old stove which by the way does not have proper clearances.

 

[30WCF]

Didn’t he say he had a horizontal section? Swept from the top, scoop from the bottom… wouldnt there be a metric crap ton in the middle sitting in a pile?

 

[30WCF]

I’m not trying to crap talk some one, but the inter-web is where I get some of my info, and sometimes I don’t know if it’s normal or faulty compared to my own baseline.

 

[30WCF]

It's not the pine. Pine does not cause creosote. The wood is not well seasoned and he may be smoldering it in the old stove which by the way does not have proper clearances.

I’ve been avoiding pine, but y’all have me ready to go start cutting some of the downed pines behind the house and start seasoning them.

I have a thing I run by myself once in a while.
There are things that are true. (I live in NC. True.)

There are things that used to be true.
Undercooked pork would give you trichinosis. (While technically this can be still true with home grown pork, commercially grown pork is fed and medicated differently, and does not feed as a scavenger. It’s ok to eat store bought pork that’s not well done.) I couldn’t convince an older guy at a work cookout that it was ok to eat a pork chop that wasn’t burned to a crisp. It was “true” when he was a kid.

There are things that were never true, but reasonable. The earth is flat. ( If you sailed off into the ocean and never came back, you must have fallen off the horizon.)

Pine is bad because it causes chimney fires, ( or if unseasoned it is more volatile than other types of wood.) Maybe one of those is true, and the other was reasonable within the circumstances and with equipment available.

Maybe one day we will find out I don’t actually live in NC, nor am I Caucasian?

 

[peakbagger]

My neighbor used to have an indoor wood boiler with no storage. He bought green hardwood in tree length in the spring and burned it that fall. His chimney is a large floor to ceiling fireplace made out of granite stones mounted on the end wall of the house with the flue for the boiler running along in the back of the fireplace. When there is no heat demand on the boiler the air damper closes and allows the fire to smolder until the next need for heat. He would crank it up in the AM and then as the day warmed up it would mostly smoulder.

He had numerous chimney fires the first few years. He eventually chained a ladder to the side of the chimney and was cleaning monthly. He still had fires. His flue liner cracked from one of them so he had a liner installed. He had more chimney fires and at some point damaged the liner. I came home after a vacation and there was used OWB in the yard with a short stack. No more chimney fires but he skunked out the neighborhood including my place (smoke detectors going off in my attic). It was an illegal install but the town allowed him to keep it by installing a 30' stack. I dont think he has had any more chimney fires since then as I think the creosote just runs down the stack back into the boiler. He also does not use it as often.

Meanwhile I burn dry wood and have an old school indoor wood boiler with storage and an interior chimney. In 30 plus years of burning wood (20 with the wood boiler), I have run a brush down the flue twice, mostly out of guilt. I inspect the flue yearly. I am not advocating that everyone can get away with skipping annual cleaning but it comes down to every wood burner is different, there are things that can be done like dry wood and storage that can really cut way down on the need for cleaning but every install and operator is different.

The neighbor is most likely moving to another house in a development he is building at some point so some other sucker from out of state will pay a bundle for the mess. BTW, he goes through 8 cords a year and I go through 3- 1/2 cords as my primary heating source. Creosote is just BTUs going up the stack.

 

[bholler]

I don’t have a personal community to draw from.
I started out cleaning my chimney twice a year, then went to once a year.
Granted, I’m a weekender.
Is this guy clueless and in danger of torching his house and neighborhood down, or is he within spec?
I can sweep once a year and have no resistance except when changing direction and having to compress the bristles to do so. I might start with some intermittent scale, and return to almost a mirror finish.
This guy had fins growing inward in his chimney, laying full body weight on his rods, dumping creosote all over his rooftop, and he says it’s usually worse. Is that normal and I’m OCD if I scrub the heck out of some freckling once, maybe twice a year?
If this is normal, I can relax.

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For more detailed information, see our cookies page.

Accept third party cookies

I sometimes think about how could a chimney sweep ( Mary Poppins) be/have been a full time job, but with wet wood and a bad stove, maybe.

Being a chimney sweep absolutely can be and is a full time job. Honestly we have to turn away lots of work simply because we can't handle more

 

[Eman85]

You can burn anything that fits in your stove as long as you understand what it's doing. Old timer told me years ago about people that wouldn't burn certain types of wood. The only man that wouldn't burn that wood will be a cold man. Every wood has it's purpose. If what you have is pine and you don't want to buy an expensive stove and you don't want to wake up every hour to reload you will instead be cleaning your chimney.

 

[bholler]

You can burn anything that fits in your stove as long as you understand what it's doing. Old timer told me years ago about people that wouldn't burn certain types of wood. The only man that wouldn't burn that wood will be a cold man. Every wood has it's purpose. If what you have is pine and you don't want to buy an expensive stove and you don't want to wake up every hour to reload you will instead be cleaning your chimney.

Again pine absolutely does not make any more creosote than any other wood as long as the wood is dry and the stove is run properly it's perfectly fine

 

[30WCF]

On a side note…
On my brick smoker, I built this about 8 years ago. A year or so ago, I hit the inside with a wire brush to clean it. I mostly burn pecan, apple, peach, maple or persimmon. Once coals are established I burn one split, and set the next split on the opposite side of the fire box to warm. This helps with reducing the harsh tasting smoke when adding the new split if it is already very warm.
Does this seem like creosote or smokey goodness plastered all over the walls of the cook chamber?
I can scrape/wire brush it more often, but I don’t think I’ll ever get it clean.

I used to use it like an outdoor fireplace and sit out by it in the evenings with the firebox open, which would have a more robust flame. Nowadays I just cook briskets and Thanksgiving Turkey. Typically, there is some fire on start up, a little when a new split is added, but mostly, it’s a coal bed with some smaller flames below the cast iron baffle under the food. There are lots of charred drippings under the food on the cast and fire brick.

 

[30WCF]

 

[30WCF]

I always assumed it was just smokey goodness on the walls, but every once in a while I do look at it and think to myself….is this think gonna go up in flames one day?
My brother did have an offset metal smoker go up on him one day when he left the cook lid open when he took the food inside. He came back out to a ball of fire on his back porch, shut it down and closed it all up and it snuffed itself out. He may have had a pool of fresh pork butt grease in the bottom too.

 

[EbS-P]

I’ve been avoiding pine, but y’all have me ready to go start cutting some of the downed pines behind the house and start seasoning them.

I have a thing I run by myself once in a while.
There are things that are true. (I live in NC. True.)

There are things that used to be true.
Undercooked pork would give you trichinosis. (While technically this can be still true with home grown pork, commercially grown pork is fed and medicated differently, and does not feed as a scavenger. It’s ok to eat store bought pork that’s not well done.) I couldn’t convince an older guy at a work cookout that it was ok to eat a pork chop that wasn’t burned to a crisp. It was “true” when he was a kid.

There are things that were never true, but reasonable. The earth is flat. ( If you sailed off into the ocean and never came back, you must have fallen off the horizon.)

Pine is bad because it causes chimney fires, ( or if unseasoned it is more volatile than other types of wood.) Maybe one of those is true, and the other was reasonable within the circumstances and with equipment available.

Maybe one day we will find out I don’t actually live in NC, nor am I Caucasian?

Remember a few years ago they moved the NC/SC boarder. A few home switched states

 

[cahaak]

I burn pine all the time, no issues, but I burn dry wood and have an EPA stove. I cleaned my flue this year after three years of burning, got about two cups of essentially carbon black out. Dry wood burnt in an EPA stove leads to very little chimney deposits.