Planning first Jotul C350 chimney clean

[RSNovi]

1.5 seasons ago I installed a Jotul C350 insert into my prefab. Today I have the day off so I plan to clean the chimney.

I have a Sooteater and plan to do a bottom up clean since the chimney is 30+ feet. I have cleaned the chimney on my stove in the basement through the outside cleanout, but I have never done an inside clean before. I hope to not make a huge mess.

I am not expecting a ton of soot, but I have never cleaned it before so I might be surprised.

 

[Nick Mystic]

I use a Sooteater to clean my flue, but I've always done it from the top down since access to my chimney is easy. I can't give you any first hand tips on cleaning from the bottom up, but I will alert you to the fact that with most set ups the chimney rain cap is going to be the dirtiest part of your system. If you aren't going on the roof to take the cap off to clean it separately you might want to have someone with a pair of binoculars looking at your cap as you reach it with the Sooteater. They might be able to tell you if it looks like you are getting sufficient cleaning taking place. Good luck.

 

[RSNovi]

Just finished. Things went pretty smooth. First there wasn't much buildup. The second was the offset box which I think was good and bad.

The good is that it caught a lot of the mess so it didn't come crashing down into the fireplace minimizing mess.

The bad part was all of the junk was in the offset box. I couldn't get my vacuum into the corners so I just to scrape it down into the fireplace with my hand. Over all a pretty quick and easy job.