Today I had a professional sweep the chimney for our PE Alderlea T5. It's been 1.5 heating seasons and about 5 cord of mixed hard woods. This is all that he got out of the stack.
I'd guess that's about a teaspoon of fly ash. I'd say that between the stove, my firewood and our operations, we're doing very well. P.S. The baffle is sitting on the bottom of the firebox and no it's not warped at all, just an optical illusion from the camera.
I'm really glad that I paid to have a pro do the first cleaning. He had some great input on proper burning and maintenance. He also did a very thorough inspection of the whole system and identified a leak in the outside pipe which he sealed for me. I'll have to do a better job keeping an eye on that.
What did he say? Was he impressed like me with almost no soot or creosote? Your obviously burning very cleanly MB...
He walked in and as soon as he saw the PE he said how much he likes them. He has a bunch of clients that run them and get tiny amounts of soot. After he cleaned the chimney and got so little soot that he "needed to take a picture of it." Basically, he reassured me that burning dry wood combined with the stove was working well. He also reassured me about the occasional times that the STT gets up in the 800-850+ range. He said that can happen and that it wasn't going to hurt the stove. He did give me the "your wood may be too dry" line which caused me to have some skepticism. He also noticed a some rust around the joints on my inside pipe (only 2 yr. old) and so when he was doing his outside chimney inspection he found that the caulk around the flashing was cracked (again, only 2 yr. old) so he redid that. He also showed me how to clean out behind the boost manifold.
That's pretty dang amazing! I get a hell of a lot more than that each year. After 2 to 3 cord thru it each season, I get about a pint or 2 from the pipe, but I also get about another pint from inside the stove below the pipe. Stuff that settles down on it's own. I sweep mine myself with the drill attachment thingy (forget it's name?). It takes me an hour to do it, clean up, pretty easy but can be messy job if your not careful. I do mine from below as I can't get to my roof very easily.
Good stove & dry wood & no creosote . Sounds like the owner/operator needs to pat himself on the back. Good job "Hoarder"
Why of course that wood may be too dry else you would have had come creosote for him to clean up... Good job Mike.
