How flexible is the sooteater

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rwhite

Minister of Fire
Nov 8, 2011
1,986
North Central Idaho
Here is a picture of my stove:

muwmz9.jpg


I can remove the fire brick baffle and insulation and have direct access to the flue. There is one 45 at the stove top and the rest of the flue is straight up. Is the soot eater flexible enough to do this cleaning from the bottom? I have fiberglass rods and poly brushes now but I want to avoid going back up on my chimney as much as possible and would like to do a bottom up cleaning. Just wanting to confirm before I buy one.
 
it should be fine i went from poly brushes to sooteater as well seem to be way more flexy.
 
VERY! I have an Englander 30. To get access to the flue I take the front 3 secondary tubes out and then the two ceramic baffle boards drop down. To keep the mess down and make my life easier I constructed a wooden "door" that blocks off the opening to the stove. In that door is a 3" opening into a 90" piece of conduit. I measured and cut so the piece of conduit is pointed right up the flue. The only reason I went through this trouble is to keep any dust in the stove and to provide a nice smooth 90 degree transition for the soot eater rods.

Works like a charm! No mess and the rods went up very easily. Of course, you can just use plastic film too....but I like overkill. As long as you can get access to your flue from the door....no sweat.

Just don't do what I did and forget that you have a probe type flue thermometer in the stove pipe. The sooteater won that battle.

EDIT*** I should also mention that I have two 45 degree offsets near the ceiling to dodge a floor joist. I then have two 15 degree offsets in the attic to dodge a roof rafter. I can't even tell they are there.
 
I've got 2-45's, feed bottom up by hand until above the 45's and have no problem. Crud falls into the 45's and I vacuum out. Works in this household. :)

One little tip: You might want to put some kind of marking on your rods, like a number or something, and just run the rods up (without power) to get a feel of how far up you need to go. I find it is bit interesting to figure out when to expect when you touch the inside bottom of the chimney cap. The first time we did this, no markings on the rods, I hit the cap pretty good, stopped, went outside to see if the chimney cap had been knocked off. :)
 
One 45.... Not a problem IMHO.
 
The biggest PITA is disconnecting the rods....IMO.
 
Shouldn't be a problem

I have the offset flue adapter on my insert so the rods need to make a pretty tight turn and have no issues.

As far as disconnecting the rods - it is a pain, so much so that I will be making a tool to unlock them with one hand once my schedule clears up a little. If it works well, I'll post the plans and offer them premade
 
Aaron Pasteris said:
Shouldn't be a problem

I have the offset flue adapter on my insert so the rods need to make a pretty tight turn and have no issues.

As far as disconnecting the rods - it is a pain, so much so that I will be making a tool to unlock them with one hand once my schedule clears up a little. If it works well, I'll post the plans and offer them premade

Well, as we grow older we have problems with our hands, especially thumbs, so what you have in mind might help a lot of us! I do have a bit of a problem unlocking the rods on the Soot Eater - but then again - I have a problem unlocking the clips on my chainsaw chaps also - gotta figure out how to change the chaps to velcro closures or something........ Getting old here! :)
 
I haven't used mine yet but I was messing with it when I first bought it and I agree!

James02 said:
The biggest PITA is disconnecting the rods....IMO.
 
NATE379 said:
I haven't used mine yet but I was messing with it when I first bought it and I agree!

James02 said:
The biggest PITA is disconnecting the rods....IMO.

I use the chuck from the drill...Still a PITA sorta.
 
I find that running the drill while pulling the rods DOWN the chimney work easiest. Go about 3-4 lengths then disconnect.
 
You will be very happy that you did.
 
James02 said:
NATE379 said:
I haven't used mine yet but I was messing with it when I first bought it and I agree!

James02 said:
The biggest PITA is disconnecting the rods....IMO.

I use the chuck from the drill...Still a PITA sorta.

You are aware that the hex key that comes with the sooteater has a pointed end for this purpose? But I agree, still a PITA.
 
BurnIt13 said:
In that door is a 3" opening into a 90" piece of conduit. I measured and cut so the piece of conduit is pointed right up the flue. The only reason I went through this trouble is to keep any dust in the stove and to provide a nice smooth 90 degree transition for the soot eater rods.
Good idea with the conduit to guide and contain the rod. I prefer to use stiff rods for a top-down cleaning mainly so that I can do a visual inspection. On my dryer vent I use a really flexible rod and it flopped around too much so I ran it through a section of conduit to tame it. Worked like a charm.

A 90" long conduit sounds a tad long though.
 
naptime said:
James02 said:
NATE379 said:
I haven't used mine yet but I was messing with it when I first bought it and I agree!

James02 said:
The biggest PITA is disconnecting the rods....IMO.

I use the chuck from the drill...Still a PITA sorta.

You are aware that the hex key that comes with the sooteater has a pointed end for this purpose? But I agree, still a PITA.

Interesting...I didn't see one in the box, maybe it fell out. Glad they did compensate for that lil issue though.
 
The only thing I would caution is using your drill at too high of a speed.
I negotiated a 45 on my stove pipe and the thrashing of the poles caused the high speed gears to go out in my drill. Makita LXT.
 
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