Happy Thanksgiving everyone! I'm just sitting here waiting for Hubby to get done 'primping' so we can head out of here to have our Thanksgiving day at his Fathers home. Yesterday Hubby spent a couple of hours working on our Stove Wood Burner. We had started burning it early this year and he had not gone through it yet. Yesterday was pretty nice, so he didn't want to put it off any longer. He changed the gasket on the door and cleaned everything out real good. He disconnected the stove pipe from inside the house and put a plastic bag over the end of it being held by a bungee strap and then went on top the roof and ran our wire brush cleaning tool all the way down to the sack several times. When we removed the sack there was at least a cup of creosote in it and maybe even 2 cups. So back to my question: " How much is a lot of creosote"??? We really don't know to tell you the truth. :-S
How much is 'a lot' of creosote ???
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savageactor7
Minister of Fire
I would say 2 cups is nothing...maybe even 2 gallons of the fine brown ash but I have a 35'+ plus chimney. I suppose if you can mirror the chimney and see creosote that would be too much. The thought process being if you look up and don't see the flue's perfect square or rectangle then it's collecting at some future potential flash point...but that's just an opinion based on personal experience. I'm sure the pros have more absolute standards.
Happy Thanksgiving.
Happy Thanksgiving.
SteveT
Feeling the Heat
Agree... that isn't much. Years ago, with a pre-EPA stove, I'd get 2 or 3 cups when I did the annual sweep and didn't feel the need to sweep more often.
The question is how long did it take to build up that much creosote? Is that from a few weeks burning this year, or is some from last year?
If you have that much from just a "few" burns I'd either change the burn rate for hotter fires or be prepared sweep pretty often.
The question is how long did it take to build up that much creosote? Is that from a few weeks burning this year, or is some from last year?
If you have that much from just a "few" burns I'd either change the burn rate for hotter fires or be prepared sweep pretty often.
Thank you for your responses. I had always thought that our total stack (stove Pipe & Chimney Pipe) was about 20 feet but Hubby said it was only about 15 feet. We just got our stove in the middle of last winter and we burned it from about Feb to warm weather this year and then it got exceptionally cold early this fall and we started burning it the beginning of Nov till now. So maybe 3 or 4 months worth of burning would be pretty accurate.
So with that amout of time and length of stack, you guys think a couple of cups isn't bad?
So with that amout of time and length of stack, you guys think a couple of cups isn't bad?
SteveT
Feeling the Heat
Keep burning dry wood and you are looking good. Here's a link to a post earlier that has some articles on creosote that you may find helpful:
https://www.hearth.com/econtent/index.php/forums/viewthread/29588/
https://www.hearth.com/econtent/index.php/forums/viewthread/29588/
Backwoods Savage
Minister of Fire
Good to hear you had a nice Thanksgiving.
What we do is simply look up through the pipe to see how much soot and junk is in the chimney. Normally if there is anything it will be at the top. If it looks like there is quite a bit then we'd clean. We've also just hit against the chimney (metal chimney) and knocked some stuff down and then forgot about it for a while before checking again.
Even though with our Fireview it appears we won't be cleaning the chimney very often, we will still check it a couple times through the winter. If it just gives peace of mind, it is worth a couple of minutes to do so.
What we do is simply look up through the pipe to see how much soot and junk is in the chimney. Normally if there is anything it will be at the top. If it looks like there is quite a bit then we'd clean. We've also just hit against the chimney (metal chimney) and knocked some stuff down and then forgot about it for a while before checking again.
Even though with our Fireview it appears we won't be cleaning the chimney very often, we will still check it a couple times through the winter. If it just gives peace of mind, it is worth a couple of minutes to do so.
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