Would love some input on this one folks. A lady I work with said her stove started belching smoke in the middle of the night, had to throw water on the fire and open all the windows, she was "slightly paniced" so I stopped by the house on the way home from work and was very suprised with what I found. She has an old "smoke machine" non EPA stove but it's in a rental property and she doesn't plan on staying, not the most efficient heat but helps cut down on her gas bill. I climbed up on the roof and found some very light textured creosote on the cap, not the sticky stuff, just dry & crumbly. When I took the cap off, about 18" down into the chimney (8" x 8" terra cotta flue) it was completly blocked off. I poked it with my finger and it just crumbled and fell apart. There was about 1-1/2" layer completely blocking the flue, but when I broke that out the rest of the chimney was pretty clean. Some powder & "crumbly" stuff on the sides, but impressively clean. No build up at all. Has anyone ever seen anything like that? What caused it and how does she prevent it from happening again. I ran a brush down since I was there anyway, but did not get much out at all. Any ideas?
Never saw creosote like this
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Techstuf
New Member
She's burning good wood with the bark on, mixed with just the right amount of mixed polymer accumulates from also burning food and other household product packaging, magazines and such?
TS
TS
Same thing happened with my tile flue when my father-in-law discovered that putting wet wood in my stove made it burn a lot longer. He burned like that all day and clogged the whole chimney with that stuff. Looked like the biggest fly ash ya ever saw. When I say wet, I mean rained on wet.
fossil said:
good question rick, not sure really, think it may have been right on a tile joint where the stuff formed though. Thanks for the idea, I'll have to check see if it needs repair.
Wood seemed good, burning hot, no other apparent issues, rest of the chimney wasn't even hardly black.
bbeals
Member
I'm not a sweep by any means, but had the same thing happen to my liner after just a few days of having some really wet wood ran through the stove. Plugged it right up with a black, really light, fall apart when you touch it type of substance. Played hell on the draft though.
I find it interesting and intriguing that it formed a "disc" sort of plug rather than just more uniformly coating the inside of the chimney & cap. What caused that preferential buildup, and why did it grow radially inward? Dunno. Rough mortar around that particular joint? Cold air seeping in? Dunno. Creosote forms in strange ways, I guess. Rick
closest i can describe the texture would be like popped popcorn, very light, never saw creosote like that, just a perfect shell across the chim.
LLigetfa
Minister of Fire
That would be my guess. Ice crystals might have formed creating a lattice that the creosote could then grow on like corral. Probably near the point where the chimney transitions from inside to outside. There could also have been some falling down of creosote from above that point.fossil said:
pyro68 said:
Light off some creosote sometime. Looks like black popped popcorn after it burns. The way I used to know that I had had a chimney fire. Clean flue and a pile of that crap down at the bottom.
bbeals
Member
BrotherBart said:
My sweep was scratching his head while looking at that funny stuff in my liner. He thought I may have had a small chimney fire. The cap appeared to have sustained some heat as well. Still not sure, just his suspicion. All was cleaned, inspected and walked away with a clean bill of health and a new respect for how we burn, what we burn, etc...
Found a local sweep that's very reputable, he said anytime there is the "popcorn" texture the creosote has burned, his guess was something at that point of the chim, even a build up of creosote that burned, the rest he is guessing was accumulated on the cap and when it burned fell down and became trapped. He was telling me a 1/4 inch of creosote build up along the walls (real stuff, not the powder) if it burns can expand up to 2" in diameter. Often chimney fires are small enough the homeowner doesn't even know they happened, creosote swells as it burns, cuts way back on the air volume allowed to go up the chimney, and now there are draft issues. Was a facinating conversation. I forgot to mention this site to him, but I'm emailing him, may be interested in joining.
Sounds to me like she gathered up some creasote from the cleanout, packed it into a flue size disc and stuffed it into her chimney so she could get you to come over to her house.
WOW meathead, just please don't tell my wife that!! :cheese: creosote won't be my only problem. Your theory would be better if she would have been home when I checked the chimney. . . . %-P
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