END OF SEASON SWEEP AND INSPECTION

[Todd]

I finally got around to my spring sweep and inspection today. Swept out about 2 qts of black/brown powdery creosote from my 20' chimney after burning about 1.5 full cords of Oak. Last time it was swept was around January after burning about the same amount of wood and I ended up with the same creosote. I think I could get away with 1 cleaning in the spring time, but I like to inspect mid way through the burning season just for peace of mind. Also vacumed out the cat and all the fly ash inside the stove, and inpected the rest of stove. Everything looks good to go for next fall.

How often are you guys and gals cleaning your systems?

 

[Gunner]

Just cleaned mine for the first time last week.

Burned 3 cords total and got 2 cups of powder out of it. It was almost not worth it.

Removed the baffle, cleaned it off (didn't think it was that heavy), blew it with compressed air, also blew out the air passages and removed all ashes from the firebox

 

[Sandor]

Todd-man,

I have not swept a chimney since I have been burning wood. A fall inspection is all I do.... Just some flaky/powdery grey ash in the last foot or so on the chimney walls. Every season, it does not seem to change.

I certainly take the single wall off on the inside of the home and vacuum out the stove from above, and inside the firebox.

 

[elkimmeg]

Todd Gunner and Sandor must be burning good dry wood and have good burning practices, If that's all they can sweep out.
Another reason modern stoves are safer.

 

[titan]

I sweep mine every month during the burning season;I had a small fire in my masonry chimney a year ago, been a little paranoid since.I'm going to install a new double-walled setup top to bottom this summer....that oughta cutdown my trips to the peak.Like the inspector says"better safe than sorry";especially with small kids in the house.

 

[got wood?]

I'm gonna do my two SS flues early summer...this will be my first time doing it myself. I had a couple questions:

1. Will a good plaster dust mask from home cheapo suffice? My previous sweep had a respirator...so would I if sweeping were my job.

2. Is a shop vac good enough for what I brush out? Is there a special filter that would be required so as not to eject all the fine ash throughout the house?

3. Any tips for keeping the inside mess down? I was going to use an old bedsheet.

thx

 

[senorFrog]

1. Will a good plaster dust mask from home cheapo suffice? My previous sweep had a respirator...so would I if sweeping were my job.

Not sure. I don't plan on using one. When the sweep did mine, it wasn't any dirtier than when I empty my ash pan during burning season.

2. Is a shop vac good enough for what I brush out? Is there a special filter that would be required so as not to eject all the fine ash throughout the house?

You can get drywall or dust bags that go inside your shop vac. It's another level of containment but some dust will still escape.

I bought an 1.25" wide x 24' long sump pump hose from ace. It was like $10.00. I also got a 1.25 inch adapter for my shop vac so I can hook the sump pump hose up to it's hose. I plan on using this so I can leave the shop vac outside the house when I do my sweep. I'll let you know how thhis works out.

3. Any tips for keeping the inside mess down? I was going to use an old bedsheet.

When I had mine swept mid-season, I noticed the sweep ran his ash vacuum whenever doing anything that would raise dust. He just held the hose in the air about a foot or two away from what he was doing with one hand, and did his cleaning with the other. E.g. Shoveling ash, using the small brushes inside the stove, etc. This sucked any ash that got raised right out of the air. You could see it happen. Seemed like a good trick.

This will be my first time doing my own sweep too.

Good luck.

 

[BrotherBart]

You can get drywall or dust bags that go inside your shop vac. It's another level of containment but some dust will still escape.

I bought an 1.25" wide x 24' long sump pump hose from ace. It was like $10.00. I also got a 1.25 inch adapter for my shop vac so I can hook the sump pump hose up to it's hose. I plan on using this so I can leave the shop vac outside the house when I do my sweep. I'll let you know how thhis works out.

Yep. That has worked well for me for many years. Long hose and putting the vac on the deck outside. Well, until last year that is. Last year my head was inside the stove doing a diligent cleanout with the Shop-Vac. When I backed out the air in the kitchen and family room were completely filled with a gray cloud of ash.

A piece of charcoal had zipped through the hose into the vac and torpedoed the side of the paper filter bag. The exhaust outlet of the Shop-Vac just happened to be aimed right at the door into the house.

What a mess.

 

[suematteva]

We clean once in September..Less than a cup of the dry brownish grey dust usually..last year was like a 1/2 cup....put through 5-6 cords a year. Most wood is at least 2 years old.

 

[Gooserider]

I did my first sweep a few weeks ago, got about 2-3 gallons of black crunchy creosote, mostly in the last few feet of the chimney, I think it was fairly well plugged, as I was starting to have back-puffing problems. This was after about 6 cords of wood that had been dried for about 8-9 months. I have a lengthy thread on it over in the gear section.

I wear a "woodworkers respirator", that I got from Harbor Freight, any time I'm shoveling ashes or dumping them into my outside cans, it probably doesn't do much more than the cheapo paper masks, but it fits me better. I wore it while sweeping, but didn't raise that much dust, so I probably could have gotten away without it. However I figure no sense in taking extra chances.

I mostly picked up the creosote that came out of the chimney with my ash shovel, but I did the final cleanup with our Crapsman Wet/Dry shop vac, using the pleated paper filter that came with it. I didn't notice much of a dust cloud, but the creosote was in pretty big chunks (about the size of chainsaw chips mostly) so there wasn't a great deal of dust. I haven't tried using the vaccum to get the last of the cold ashes out of the stove (yet) so I don't know how good the paper filter will be for that.

Gooserider

 

[got wood?]

I did my first sweep a few weeks ago, got about 2-3 gallons of black crunchy creosote, mostly in the last few feet of the chimney, I think it was fairly well plugged, as I was starting to have back-puffing problems. This was after about 6 cords of wood that had been dried for about 8-9 months. I have a lengthy thread on it over in the gear section.

wow! 2-3 gallons! I've never seen that much out of a chimney before! Good thing you cleaned when you did! I had a chimney fire (small one) with far less than that in my flue.

I wear a "woodworkers respirator", that I got from Harbor Freight, any time I'm shoveling ashes or dumping them into my outside cans, it probably doesn't do much more than the cheapo paper masks, but it fits me better. I wore it while sweeping, but didn't raise that much dust, so I probably could have gotten away without it. However I figure no sense in taking extra chances.
Gooserider

Thanks for the tip...I got my splitter from HF, I've got a catalog around here somewhere.

 

[Gooserider]

I did my first sweep a few weeks ago, got about 2-3 gallons of black crunchy creosote, mostly in the last few feet of the chimney, I think it was fairly well plugged, as I was starting to have back-puffing problems. This was after about 6 cords of wood that had been dried for about 8-9 months. I have a lengthy thread on it over in the gear section.

wow! 2-3 gallons! I've never seen that much out of a chimney before! Good thing you cleaned when you did! I had a chimney fire (small one) with far less than that in my flue.

I'm guessing at the amount - it about half filled my ash bucket, which looks like about a the same size as one of my 5 gallon plastic pails. I would guess 3/4 of it was in the last 6 fee of the 24' chimney where it sticks out of the roof - I was even burning a vey hot fire at least once every few days, I tried to do one daily but didn't always get as hot as I would have liked. The good thing is that as far as I can tell there wasn't any significant amount in the cap screen, which is a good thing since I basically can't get to the top of my chimney.

I wear a "woodworkers respirator", that I got from Harbor Freight, any time I'm shoveling ashes or dumping them into my outside cans, it probably doesn't do much more than the cheapo paper masks, but it fits me better. I wore it while sweeping, but didn't raise that much dust, so I probably could have gotten away without it. However I figure no sense in taking extra chances.
Gooserider

Thanks for the tip...I got my splitter from HF, I've got a catalog around here somewhere.

If you can't find it, don't worry, you'll have another one in a few days... :roll: I would say I average 1-2 HF catalogs a week, sometimes more. I get more catalogs from HF than my girlfriend gets from any two of the clothing stores she does business with! I sometimes wonder how HF stays in business, no matter how big the markup is on their stuff. I probably give them one or two orders / year, probably averaging $1-200 an order. (And 95-99% of the stuff I order is at the lowest price they have that item listed for in the previous years catalogs...) They send me what I'm guesstimating must be a couple hundred dollars a year worth of catalogs. From all the comments I've heard from the Pro's who spend a lot of money on tools, they don't get them from HF, and I'd be inclined to doubt that there are huge numbers of DIY types that would spend a lot more than I do - if they had the money they'd be purchasing from a better source! Something doesn't add up, but I'm not going to argue.

Gooserider

 

[senorFrog]

2. Is a shop vac good enough for what I brush out? Is there a special filter that would be required so as not to eject all the fine ash throughout the house?

You can get drywall or dust bags that go inside your shop vac. It's another level of containment but some dust will still escape.

I bought an 1.25" wide x 24' long sump pump hose from ace. It was like $10.00. I also got a 1.25 inch adapter for my shop vac so I can hook the sump pump hose up to it's hose. I plan on using this so I can leave the shop vac outside the house when I do my sweep. I'll let you know how thhis works out.

As promised, I did my end of season sweep today and will update you how the shop vac with long sump pump hose worked.

It worked very well. No shortage of suction. All the dust went right outside the house. Only clogged a few times because I was lazy and tried to vac some partially burnt wood. Ash and creosote was no problem at all. I put a clamp on the connection between the sump pump hose and shop vac adapter to prevent it from slipping off as another user reported. I got the shop vac itself well away from the house. Also, used a drywall bag inside the shop vac. It made cleanup of the shop vac real easy because all I had to do was throw the bag in the trash and hit the shop vac with my leaf blower. There was no dust or creosote whatsoever in the shop vac. Lot's of ash in the hose but I hit that with the leaf blower too.

Only complaint was the shop vac made a VERY high pitched howling or whistling noise. It was almost deafening. I had to wear ear muffs and make sure everyone else was in another room.

 

[Corie]

I'm excited to do a cleaning and see how the first year of burning my stove really turned out. I suspect there will be lots of powdery stuff in the first few feet of pipe, but everyone got in such a good habit of letting the stove burn nice and hot that I doubt there's much creosote up there at all.


Imagine that, I'm actually excited to climb up on the roof and get all dirty cleaning the chimney this year. I'm a hearth nerd.

 

[JBinKC]

I have done an inspection and had some crunchy creosote on the top of my stack. I definitely will perform a cleaning before the next burning season. It didn't take much to create the condition my stack was in great shape until I ran out of wood late in the season and had to burn a face cord of dead limbs off of the ground that had apparently needed more time to fully dry out.

 

[Henz]

Hmm..I burned about 6 cord and haent cleaned it yet!

 

[hookspacken]

I plan on doing another cleaning soon, will take the top off and claen the convertor as well. I cleaned a couple times over the winter but not much at all was up there, mostly soot.

 

[Henz]

I probably sholdnt wait until it gets real humid out though huh

 

[Corie]

Nope, I would do it as soon as ya can. This way its done and you can focus on other, more enjoyable things.