Swept the Chimney Today

[Longknife]

I dunno? I'm pretty happy. This seems pretty good for approx. 30ft of chimney and the 19 face cord I put through the stove last "winter" (late-September until mid-June). Plus the stove itself dates back until the late '80s.

It's not like I always burn premium hardwood either. while it's more an exercise of cleaning up the property and not bothering putting something through the chipper, I will toss just about anything in the stove during shoulder season, from punky old elm, sumac, white cedar, dimensional lumber scraps, old firewood with mushrooms growing out of it, whatever.

You guys tell me, but that seems like a pretty reasonable amount of soot? The chimney cap itself was probably about the cleanest it's ever been before a cleaning.

I get more particular about my wood burning techniques every year, but I swore every time I went outside this year I thought to myself "Damn, smells like she's running a little smoky". and I kept worrying I wasn't running it hot enough during the warm spells.

I suck out the soot with a shop vac, so hard to tell how much is there, but I'd estimate it to be maybe 3 quarts worth? I think it's a 6 inch stainless chimney.



This is the after:

 

[KJamesJR]

Doesn’t look too bad.

I just did mine for the first time since February. I was burning some wet wood last winter. We also like long burns, so we burn at low temps. Just enough to get the house above 70f. Sucked out a couple handfuls of soot.

All my gunk builds up inside the stove pipe for some reason. Chimney was clean, stove pipe was a mess. Kinda odd.

Got her back together this evening. Polished and baking it in currently with some cherry. It’s only 56f outside at the moment so I’m kinda regretting lighting the stove. It is nice to be rolling again though.

 

[Longknife]

A lot of the build up I get inside the stove pipe and the short horizontal section of the chimney (these pictures), and on top of the baffle in the stove, is not really soot/creosote but seems like really fine ash that got carried up with the draft. All (most) of the black soot is up higher in the chimney where it condensates..