Pre Season Prep, Anyone Else Getting Ready?

So I ran the Soot Eater up the chimney today and gave the unit the once over. Vacuumed out the fans and vent, gave the glass a good cleaning. Got about 16 oz of brown fines. Used to get black crunchies but much better since adding a block plate and insulating.

First pic is from today second is what I used to get.

 

I think, based on your description, the pics are backazzwards.
I need to run the vacuum on the blower. Thanks for the reminder.

 

No not backwards. The first pic is fine brown fluffy from today. The second is just a small amount of the black shiny crunchy stuff I was getting in the past but there was plenty more of it! Had worse actually. Never any glaze-sote but not great. Thought I had a pic of an entire cleanings worth of the crunchy crap but can't find it .

 

Ah, ok. Brown fluffy is gooder than black crunchy. You betcha.
I used to get quite a bit of the BC stuff, now not so much.

 

How 'bout these chunks of nastiness from a few years back! What a newb!

 

Yeah cold starts are tough. Have to do a lot too. Made changes in my system that helped my exterior chimney quite a bit and I don't chase burn times as much as I used to. Keep thinking one day I'd like to put a temp monitor at the top of the stack and regulate air based on exhaust temp, keeping it above creo condensation temp of about 240 I think. Either that or sweep a couple times a year!

 

Pop some pics on there are some smart people here. Even if you can't do anything with the exposed block maybe you can do something down below to send the hottest gases you can up to minimize the problem.
How is your stove connected to the clay tile? Can you insulate in and around smoke shelf or just into chimney with thimble?

 

I used to have that problem too with my Quad. I am away 11 hours. I spent a pile of money insulating and replacing windows. Then I got the Ideal Steel. The problem totally went away. The house holds the heat and the Ideal Steel still offers me tons of hot coals. It was hard to trust at first, but it never let me down.

 

Good you're on top of it and not oblivious so if an extra sweep is needed you do it. If you are getting enough heat out of the unit and don't need the heat from the pipe I'd go for it. Better to heat with the stove and not with the pipe IMO.

 

Nice when everything is back in tip top working order. What do you use to sweep BW? I have about 27' that I use a soot eater on but sometimes the dust is a bit rough doing a bottom up job.

This time I ran the shop vac and blew all the fine dust right out the door but tough to do mid-season. Based on last couple years I may skip the mid-season cleaning.

 

Nice if you can get to that point.

 

Been doing a mid-season sometime in January last three years and been improving each year as the wood and my technique improves. Nice knowing I can probably go a bit longer if the weather doesn't co-operate.

 

Alright, you are now officially my hero.

Soot Eater works good and saves me from having to take off the cap not to mention stand on a high roof. Dust can be a bit of a problem. It helps to be deliberate in your movements like when shoveling ash but a certain amount of dust is inevitable. This time I stuck the rigid sections of the hose in the suction side of the shop vac and positioned them right in front of the door. I left the filter in but stuck the flexible hose section out the door for good measure. Worked good.