Mid season chimney cleaning

[SmokinJo88]

first things first I am a novice trying to do the right thing and keep my stoves operating safe and efficiently. I have two stoves to heat a 1750 sq ft home that has block walls on a concrete slab. One stove is a 2010 hearthstone Mansfield with secondary burn tubes. The other is a Waterford 103 older smoke dragon. The stoves both 90 through the wall and the smoke is carried up and out through a block and square clay chimney with exterior clean outs well below where the smoke enters the chimney. Based on that I recon there is only the one 90* bend in the house of metal stove pipe and no 90 up into the chimney as I can see from the clean out clear to the top of the chimney.

So I foolishly returned the 8” square chimney brush I came home with in exchange for an 8” round only to get up on the roof and see I had the right brush to begin with…. The hearthstone had a fair amount of creosote built up after a couple months of steady burning. I cleaned from the top down with the 8” round brush and seem to have gotten pretty decent results.
The Waterford 103 surprised me there was no flakey chunky build up but a thin sheen of black creosote film maybe 1/32nd”
Does the buildup look bad for the hearthstone after only 2 months? Is the thin lining from the smoke dragon dangerous and harder to properly remove?

Lastly, and I appreciate your patience with my lack of knowledge. Will a rotary drill brush clean out a 6” and 8” single wall stove pipe? I am a bit apprehensive to take apart the pipe inside and clean it as I just don’t want to screw anything up or damage my pipe in the heart of winter but I won’t feel like my job is complete until I have gotten the indoor portion thoroughly cleaned.

 

[begreen]

It's good that you are being proactive and staying on top of cleaning. Both flues look like they want to be hotter near the top. Is this an exterior chimney? If so, an insulated stainless liner would really help. In lieu of that, run the Waterford hotter and add some Cre-away to the fire and sweep again in a couple of weeks.

 

[SmokinJo88]

Thank you for the reply. The chimneys are on the exterior of the house. The hearthstone is a 6” pipe that is necked up to 8” at the 90* . I am assuming the chimney liner would have to be smaller than 8” so it may work well for the hearthstone but what about the Waterford as it is 8” right off the stove?