<Real> Fuel

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Peter B.

Feeling the Heat
Feb 27, 2008
453
SW Wisconsin
<Real> Fuel

Having survived the winter (I think) with a tired stove and less than optimal wood, I ventured upstairs today and grabbed the third of a grocery bag worth of creosote I've swept from the chimney over the past two seasons.

Properly, I should have let fly in colder weather (it was in the low 30's here today), but I was in something of a housekeeping mode and couldn't be denied.

I put the whole bag in the stove on a medium hot fire and added a middling oak split.

Not unexpectedly, the stove got QUITE hot for a couple of hours... with a radiation intensity that well exceeded the everyday fire. If you enjoy room temperatures of 75* or more, you should have been here.

If there's a moral to the story, in several of the forms commonly found in the typical chimney or stove pipe, creosote is - once kindled - a not insignificant source of fuel... and definitely one to be reckoned with.

By weight, I would confidently wager that the BTU content of creosote is higher than any species of wood.

But I ain't a betting man.

PB

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I bought my stove used and it was a creosote laden mess. I scraped all the easy stuff off and filled it up with dry pine. It was quite a show, kind of like coal and gasoline.
 
I get a little buildup in our heat exchanger on our furnace. Theres 70 degree heat hitting the tubes so theres always a little. Whenever I clean it I take the cup or two of stuff and toss it into a hot fire. At first there is nothing but then it starts to smoke and the firebox lights up. It reminded me of bitumous coal, smokey and stinky but theres alot of energy there.
 
Wouldn't work for me . . . the only stuff I get out of sweeping my chimney is soot . . . fine black or gray dust . . . pretty sure it wouldn't work very well to burn in the woodstove . . . guess I'll just have to stick with burning this darned wood. ;)
 
I'm with Jake on this one.
 
SolarAndWood said:
I bought my stove used and it was a creosote laden mess. I scraped all the easy stuff off and filled it up with dry pine. It was quite a show, kind of like coal and gasoline.

When I bought this house the owner said he had burned the stove about 3 or 4 times....ever...on a 25+ year old stove. The chimney was shared with the LP appliances...single wall stove pipe went thru the wall with a whopping 2 inches of clearance to the panelling and plugged into a chipped out hole in the masonry (we don't need no stinking thimble). Opened the stove and looked inside...the sides and top looked like they had been finished in black resin about 1/8" thick. I tapped on the stove pipe and it sounded like the pipe was made of Styrofoam...not ping/cling/clang...just a dull thud. When I pulled the stove pipe it had a good 2 inches of creosote on it. I got, no joke, about 2 gallons out of 36" of pipe. When I looked in the masonry chimney it also was black and mirror shiny for a good ways up.

I've since correct all of that mess, but like you said, with the first fire the creosote inside the stove burned off. Got pretty interesting. I didn't think a Rutland could climb that fast. In hindsight I'm lucky I didn't crack the stove from the rapid heating...never really got all that hot (700*)...but it got hot RIGHT NOW. Not sure what else I could do because that stuff was NOT scraping off.

I wonder wtf he was burning to get that much creosote that fast?
 
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