Probably could’ve gone another year without sweeping my Jotul 550 insert, but I like to make sure it’s clear yearly.
Typically I find the biggest pain about it is dealing with the heavy baffles inside the stove to get at the flue. This year I decided to do something a little bit different so hopefully save a little bit of effort. Instead of taking out the baffles like the manual specifies, Ipushed to the side of the two “ skamol “ panels that are part of the baffle. That allows a fairly clear shot of the flue. While this insert has three secondary air tubes the manual says need to be removed in order to take out the baffles, I decided to only take the one out in the middle to allow access to those panels. Got up on the roof and used the sooteater as normal. When I got back down, there did not appear to be very much build up, as typical. Some dry stuff only. Did my best to stick my shop vac up to that baffle area through the panel opening and vacuum out the build up that would have fallen on the baffle itself. I think I would probably be more anal about the whole procedure if I typically got a lot of build up, which I do not.
I’ve been sort of dreading sweeping the chimney as normal, dealing with a lot of back pain lately, but this little shortcut that I took, seem to cut down quite a bit on overall effort, which, for me, is getting the stupid secondary tubes back into their proper position, all the while, holding up with one hand, the two heavy baffles inside the stove. Perhaps I’ll remove the baffles every few years to vacuum the tops of those, but I’m pretty confident that I could go several years using procedure above and be completely fine.
Sorry, no pics, but I wanted to get this project done ASAP once I started it.
Once again, I’ve gotta hand it to the chimney sweeps that do this regularly. It’s certainly ain’t fun or easy.
Typically I find the biggest pain about it is dealing with the heavy baffles inside the stove to get at the flue. This year I decided to do something a little bit different so hopefully save a little bit of effort. Instead of taking out the baffles like the manual specifies, Ipushed to the side of the two “ skamol “ panels that are part of the baffle. That allows a fairly clear shot of the flue. While this insert has three secondary air tubes the manual says need to be removed in order to take out the baffles, I decided to only take the one out in the middle to allow access to those panels. Got up on the roof and used the sooteater as normal. When I got back down, there did not appear to be very much build up, as typical. Some dry stuff only. Did my best to stick my shop vac up to that baffle area through the panel opening and vacuum out the build up that would have fallen on the baffle itself. I think I would probably be more anal about the whole procedure if I typically got a lot of build up, which I do not.
I’ve been sort of dreading sweeping the chimney as normal, dealing with a lot of back pain lately, but this little shortcut that I took, seem to cut down quite a bit on overall effort, which, for me, is getting the stupid secondary tubes back into their proper position, all the while, holding up with one hand, the two heavy baffles inside the stove. Perhaps I’ll remove the baffles every few years to vacuum the tops of those, but I’m pretty confident that I could go several years using procedure above and be completely fine.
Sorry, no pics, but I wanted to get this project done ASAP once I started it.
Once again, I’ve gotta hand it to the chimney sweeps that do this regularly. It’s certainly ain’t fun or easy.
