Flue Creosote Build Up Cleaning

I don't know about the staining of the glass.

But, for wood burning, as well as probally with some pellets types. You should always do a good old fashion chimney sweep.

Not sure about your locale, but there are spray cleaners on the market made just for cleaning stove glass. Works great. As for the chimney, there is no better (and safer) advice than to have your chimney professionally cleaned at least once a year if you're an avid stove-user. They can also inspect your flue for cracks and other damage while they're at it.

Good Luck

This is the first winter I use and stove and besides the "old fashioned professional Cleaning" to be done next summer, it would be great to reduce tar to a minimum, so if manganese from Al works, I will happily burn some aluminum cans every now and then!

Its going to depend on what form of buildup your stack pipe has.

Light fluffy stuff will sweep out easily and thats the most effective solution for it.

However if you are getting thick hard tar like buildup its from running too cool of fires for too long and the only real solution I am aware of it to literally burn it out by running a hot fire for a long enough period to burn the pipes clean.

If so keep an eye on whats going on around the stack and outside and a garden hose handy because you are going to get a red hot stack pipe and good deal of hot flaming ash and ember chunks blowing out the top once that stuff lights up!

I'm in Aus burning eucalyptus also and get the "smoked" glass.

It's easy to clean. Saturday mornign task while celaning the ash from the bottom of the firebox.

A damp cloth will remove it generally. If it is really thick, then gentle use of a dishwashing scour will get the tough stuff off and then clean with tissue or damp cloth.

Usually happens when the end grain of the wood is facing the glass and the unburnt gasses hit the glass.

Obviously done while the glass is cool.

For those in the Northern Hemisphere, there are very few people here who would understand wood pellets, corn stoves and such. We still have general access to good wood supply and there is a "cottage industry" in most rural areas where property owners will sell to their town friends.

(I occasionally sell around 20 ton of wood per year from my farm.)

hello! I tried to do as you suggest, but cannot get the glass clean, also wiped the glass with a cloth soaked in a sort of turpentine without success. I will try the solvent used for paint stripping if no other better alternative show up

eucalyptus oil is a great cleaner for tar , and guess what kind of wood you're burning...

smells great in the house too

The next item to use is good quality steel wool.

I was using that for a while, but was concerned that it would scratch the glass. It didn't, but I found that softer alternatives are satisfacrory.

Don't try solvents. Mechanical process with mild lubricant (water) seemed best for me in all cases.

I asked my other half what she uses to clean our stove glass...ammonia-based glass cleaner..."Windex" in North America. We burn mostly pine and poplar, with a little Douglas fir when we can get it.

I'm not sure if we are cleaning the same stuff as you are describing. Ours is definitely not tarry black stuff. It can be scraped with a razor scraper quite easily.

We also burn a fair bit of aluminum from aluminium-lined cardboard and cooking pan liners. Never noticed one way or 'thother that the aluminum kept the cresote down. The stove is a fairly recent design--only a couple of years old, with an "air wash" where combustion air is directed at the door glass to encourage burning right on or close to the glass. It's one of the stoves that comes from Vermont or thereabouts where they make them by the gazillions.

The air wash does work to a point...If I damp down too big a fire, cresote will form and blacken the door glass. Once this happens,. the door will clean up if one lights a fire and runs it reasonably hot.

However, I tend to agree with other posters--if you run the stove too low, with too much wood in it, you are guaranteed to get creosote.

There used to be a product on the market called something like "Red Devil" that you tossed in the fire to help control creosote. Maybe someone older remembers more detail about it....

Jon.

ga sawmilleng, you got it right, too much wood at a time and then closing the damper to reduce the heat - a perfect method to produce tar and waste the energy in the wood.

Its better to have a small hot fire, and frequently place fresh wood on it, with the damper open to promote full burning.

Also, the stove may not be of a really good modern design with re-burning of the exhaust gases....they do cost a bit more of course....

All of which is why I burn pellets!

Yes.

Those new pellet burners are fantastic. Eh?

Just wish it wasn't so energy dense to produce the pellets.

Did a couple of experiments on burning plain saw dust/chips, fed to the firebox by an Archimedes screw auger.

Haven't concluded that yet. Shows promise tho'. ( I think)

Using pellets here in Germany, the heat produced is about at half the cost of oil. gas is somewhere inbetween....

Also, the CO2 footprint is far far better.....environmentally wise.....

A little off topic, but I have a comparable fuel caloric/cost value comparison between different fuels for analysis from The USDA Forest Service thats in excel.

The site is listed on the first graphic, I also listed it below. The second graphic has to do with operating costs for bio mass. Its interesting.

http://www.fpl.fs.fed.us/documnts/techline/fuel-value-calculator.pdf

Looks interesting, just too small to make it out fully. Make larger please....

This is the graphics from the second one, I originally made it smaller and even then I didn't realize that I still missed portions of it.

Does this help, I can't get it all on my monitor when I copy it and I only got a 27" monitor.................. auhhh, it only .....slightly better

Did you expand it fully after placing it? It is still unreadable....

Ggrab the bottom rh corner and move it as far as you can to the right before letting it go; IT MUST FILL THE SCREEN AREA!!!

You can prevent build up of creosote by keeping the chimney temperature high enough to stop the deposition. Once it's there it's only removable by very high temp burning. Cleaning the glass is easier though. Once you have it cleaned just spit on the glass and wipe the spit all over the glass with a tissue and leave to dry. The next time you clean the glass it will just take a wipe with a damp cloth.

Hard to believe I know, but it works, maybe worth a discussion on the properties of saliva.

I thought saliva worked on diver goggles and fogged windshields! will try it!

I burn Oak in my stove and if "soot" builds up on the glass it indicates its running too cold.

I clean it as someone suggested with a damp cloth. Just dip the damp cloth in a bit of the ash and rub gently over the soot...should come right off or at least loosen to the point that you can then wipe it clean with another pass of a damp cloth.

Clean the chimney flue with a good old chimney cleaning brush...yeah it's work but it does clean it.

I too use a damp rag dipped in ash followed by polishing with a clean rag to clean the glass of my litte stove. It always works and requires little effort. I usually burn Beech, Ash or Field Maple/Sycamore. But for the last ten months or so I have been burning well seasoned Poplar (it was free) The stove is working well but it hasn't been swept for about a year so it will be interesting to see what comes out of the flue when it is swept in the very near future. I do occasionally burn the odd alluminium can. I don't know if it helps but I figure it can't do any harm. I live in Wiltshire (UK).

Hi, Doc,

My wood fired stove flue is straight, about 150dia., and suffers the same buildup you describe.

I tie a fired housebrick onto a stout light line, (hardware shop PE rope) and drop it down the flue till it hits the damper. Open the damper and quickly drag the brick up and down in the pipe till it fits easy and most of the 'tar' has gone, through the opened damper into the firebox. Sometimes more than a bucketful.

I clean the glass several times a season with a razor blade. The one with the 'stiffback', single sided, in a simple holder for ergonomics.

Cost? Zero!

Bother? Very little.

Satisfaction for not having to get a 'sweep' to do it? Heaps.

Been doing it this way for years. (Just realised that I haven't said about getting on the roof, first, then lifting off the flue cap).

Works for me.

Stu.

I recently had to reline a chimney that the previous owner had cleaned every year by running and old bumper jack up and down against the lining...cracked every single tile in that chimney!

Mine's a 304ss fluetube.

No such trouble.

IF it had been tiles another strategy would be developed.

yeah..... I should have used 304 SS too!

Hi Stu, this problem seems to affect mainly people who live in the southern hemisphere like us. Can we blame the fact of living upside-down in the planet? I definitely will try the razor blade this weekend ! ... and the brick when winter is over! thanks!

Doc,

Cheers Mate.

They've been telling me most of my life that I've always been R's up

Works for me.

All the best.

Stu.

I have had occasion to clean out the stovepipes here, especially if I burn cottonwood. A buildup can cause a chimney fire. What we did was drop some chains down from the roof into the pipe and rattle them around. That shook loose some. I also have used a yardstick inside the house and beat on the exposed pipes. About twice a year in the winter this has to be done or the pipes stop drawing smoke from the stove. Never heard of the aluminum can method but I am not an authority on the subject, just relaying my own experience. Hope that helped.

Once I rented a bungalow for a winter holiday and lit a large iron stove that was in the middle of the living room. The pipe got straight up and trough the roof. A while later I started hearing a weird, quite loud humming noise, but initially did not understand what was going on. When I happened to look at the stove I saw the paint on the pipe starting to drip, and got it immediately: THERE WAS A CHIMNEY FIRE! As the stove had no front door I used the first thing I had at hand, which happened to be a small portable camping table to block the fireplace´s opening to choke the fire. Despite it was not 100% closed, it helped to reduce the fire until getting someone to hand over a fire extinguisher. My wife, who was returning from the supermarket saw 1 meter ( 3ft) high flames getting out from the chimney top! To make a long story short: we finally managed to cool the pipe down with the garden hose, extinguish the fire, check the roof and nearby trees to discard the spreading of fire... and got to bed 3 hours later with the whole house looking and smelling like a battlefield, also thanking God for not having to spend the night outside in the snow! This is something we never will forget!

nothing draws a crowd in a neighborhood like a good chimney fire

WISH NOT IN MINE......

I really know what you mean - you generally don't forget it when it happens! We had a chimney fire last year, (I'm in New Zealand, and have winter while everyone else has summer, except Australia of course) so the very next day went out and bought a 6in chimney brush from hardware supply store - Bunnings in this case - and hauled it up the chimney from the bottom. Got heaps of fluffy soot, which blew around a lot and made a bit of a mess.

We have a fire place with a damper control, so when the chimney fire started, the fire had not been going all that long and had been putting another log on it, and left the door ajar. I thought it was airliner going over head, as the roaring of the fireplace sounded reasonably similar, but didn't realize what was happening until the chimney inside started to glow, and the trees out side lit up by the flames which were leaping out of the chimney, along with chunks of burning soot! Scared the s**t out of me to be honest!

Hello Drafty-01 ! you said: "I'm in New Zealand, and have winter while everyone else has summer, except Australia of course"... Let me tell you one thing: in Argentina we are shivering as well!

@ r&ddoc That's true. My apologies!

Actually as an addition, we just put it out by closing the door an closing the damper - and hoping that that was enough. Turns out it was.

Putting a fire out as you say will do it, but if someone opens the door or the damper while heat is still in the fire, you will cause a heavy explosion as the gases catch fire.....

watch these videos:-

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tbtta2w1P9I

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O88ztYPAXp4&feature=related

A good example of a partially blocked chimney or a damper that is too far closed for the fuel and/or the air control valves in the door are too far open:-

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F8KJM5LIoCU

This website covers it well:-

http://www.hearth.com/econtent/index.php/wiki/flashback/

and this:-

http://www.wrightwoodcalif.com/forum/index.php?topic=6294.0

Remember, just saying that you have a different wood, or stove or what is simply not understanding the real problem......

Do you know which one to open first in such situations? Damper or door?

The stove's front 'glass' is actually ceramic. Fine steel wool is the best thing to use. I would avoid cleaning it with chemicals like window cleaner.

Don't close the damper! Run it hot enough to maintain the secondary combustion (for my stove this is the blue plasma-like flames burning in the top of the firebox) and you should have very little smoke coming out of the chimney and minimal smoke stains on the window. Creosote can build up to dangerous levels in a few weeks burning a low cool fire and the 'high efficiency' of newer wood stoves only happens when they are burning at the correct temperature.

The type of wood only varies the density of the fuel, the important factor is moisture content. Wood seasoned for at least two years is optimal. Properly seasoned wood has less moisture to facilitate condensation of creosote and burns hotter.

Once I learned these things I don't have the tar-like creosote buildup any more. Cleaning (every two months) only produces a handful of light flakes. The smoked window and the creosote buildup are closely related, and both are solved by burning a hotter fire.

Thanks to all for the tips and comments!

I have cleaned the front glass (oops.. ceramic!) with both a razor blade (hard to find nowadays) and also with very fine steel wool. Both worked ok, but I feel steel wool did better. I will call the manufacturer to ask what kind of local wood they recommend, cause I have the feeling that the temperature in the combustion chamber could be higher, as some smoke is seen on top of the pale yellow flame when burning the eucalyptus wood I use now. I´ll keep you posted!

While you are talking to the OEM about the stoves, please also ask them for recommendations on cleaning the glass. I have avoided the use of steel wool because of the possibility of scratching the glass, with the potential for these scratches causing stress risers and subsequent cracking. This is why we use a razor instead. But I don't know if my concerns are reasonable or not.

Jon.

OK, I will ask them about the glass cleaning too!

Till you get better advice, use the following:-

Top damper, the one that regulates the smoke exit speed - open full. Do not touch it anymore.

Regulate temperature only by the lower air intakes, I haven't a clue what they are called anymore......You will probably find that they only need to be open a crack, but never close them completely.

When loading fresh wood, (a) open the bottom air vents fully first in case of a gas buildup, let it run a minute like that to clear that buildup before opening the door for loading wood.

If when doing (a) above, you get minor "puffing", let that stop fully before opening the loading door. This "puffing" is an indication that you are running the stove a bit "too slow!" To keep the temperature lower (with less "controlling"), load less wood at a time.....It should not happen much, if at all, with the top damper fully open, but it does depend to a degree on just how airtight the stove is (or just how well its built!). As running it so will find every tiny airleak....

Best of luck.

Hi Jon,

I called the stove´s manufacturer, who told me that eucalyptus is the most convenient wood to be used in our country. About the glass cleaning issue: he said that the best way to do it is using the cleaner they sell ... but that other alternatives like soft steel wool + glass cleaner or a non abrasive cleaner are as good as their product. They do not recommend using razors cause (they say) small dents on the blade may cause scratches to the glass.

Regards

Hi, R&D,

Thanks for taking the time to ask the question! We'll change the way we clean our glass--away from the razor edge.

Jon.

You are welcome! Have a nice weekend!