That’s crazy. Hard to believe it was intact after all that. We just had to bust a slug out of ours again. It was below the clean out. We found a BRICK lodged in there diagonally. I have no idea where it came from or how it got there. I was wondering why we hadn’t gotten any creosote out of the chimney, and that is why. The brick was catching it. We busted through it with the chimney rod and got everything cleaned out. The stove works much better now.
From the original post...I assume that means truly dry, like 2-3 years CSS'd wood, if so then it sounds like this flue would really benefit from a stainless flex liner, preferably insulated...that would eliminate a lot of this creosote buildup (unless OP has an old school stove that's run "low n slow" a lot)
Yep...most everything I burn is 2yr old and I randomly check a few splits with MM to verify they are 12 percent or below. I think the problem was a result of poor cleaning the rectangular flue over the years. I plan to step up maintenance and burn a little hotter moving forward. Might look into a SS liner this Spring??
