I finally got around to cleaning my chimney this evening. I had the clay liner busted out of my chimney last November or early December - I forget and replaced it with a rigid 6 inch liner with 1/2 inch insulation.
I got exactly 1/2 gallon of very small and light flakey black creosote. About 3/4 of that was at the bottom of the chimney - the rest came out when I brushed it.
I used a poly brush and brushed top down. The brush was a good tight fit. After brushing and vacuuming the creosote out of the cleanout, I put a light at the bottom of the chimney and aside from being "dirty" from use, it looked super clean and almost new.
This stove, my Woodstock Keytone, burned 24/7 from the time the liner was installed through April of this year and a bit into the first weeks of May. I easily burned 3 cords of wood and while 95% of it was very seasoned and dry, there were a few questionable sticks mixed in from time to time. Also, this stove is a cat stove and I had to replace the cat combustor late season - so there were a few weeks that we were seeing smoke from the chimney as the cat was not working as well as it should have.
I also decided that once I got the liner in place that given I had a modern, clean burning stove, a well insulated liner, great draft and good wood - that I didn't feel the need to climb up on the roof and check the chimney every month. Maybe I should have, but I felt pretty confident that given the experiences of others on this board that with good wood, stove, chimney, etc., there wouldn't be a creosote problem and tonight I found there wasn't.
I have wrote many times reflecting my Dad's experience with woodstoves when I was growing-up, especially with the non-EPA Englander and the VC Defiant Encore cat stove that he struggled mightly with creosote build-up. Often he would clean the chimney once a month and his roof was much more difficult to get-up on than mine. I saw him scoop out more than a coal bucket of creosote sometimes when cleaning his chimney so a 1/2 gallon for me tonight was fantastic. My woodpile for this fall/winter is better conditioned than last year so I expect even better results this burning season.
Bill
I got exactly 1/2 gallon of very small and light flakey black creosote. About 3/4 of that was at the bottom of the chimney - the rest came out when I brushed it.
I used a poly brush and brushed top down. The brush was a good tight fit. After brushing and vacuuming the creosote out of the cleanout, I put a light at the bottom of the chimney and aside from being "dirty" from use, it looked super clean and almost new.
This stove, my Woodstock Keytone, burned 24/7 from the time the liner was installed through April of this year and a bit into the first weeks of May. I easily burned 3 cords of wood and while 95% of it was very seasoned and dry, there were a few questionable sticks mixed in from time to time. Also, this stove is a cat stove and I had to replace the cat combustor late season - so there were a few weeks that we were seeing smoke from the chimney as the cat was not working as well as it should have.
I also decided that once I got the liner in place that given I had a modern, clean burning stove, a well insulated liner, great draft and good wood - that I didn't feel the need to climb up on the roof and check the chimney every month. Maybe I should have, but I felt pretty confident that given the experiences of others on this board that with good wood, stove, chimney, etc., there wouldn't be a creosote problem and tonight I found there wasn't.
I have wrote many times reflecting my Dad's experience with woodstoves when I was growing-up, especially with the non-EPA Englander and the VC Defiant Encore cat stove that he struggled mightly with creosote build-up. Often he would clean the chimney once a month and his roof was much more difficult to get-up on than mine. I saw him scoop out more than a coal bucket of creosote sometimes when cleaning his chimney so a 1/2 gallon for me tonight was fantastic. My woodpile for this fall/winter is better conditioned than last year so I expect even better results this burning season.
Bill