I cleaned my chimney a few days ago. When I took the cap off the clean-out; I have a 1 foot section of chimney below the tee, it cap was full of water and full of yuck. The two hurricanes that blew through plus the three; or was it four, floods I had this year, must have pushed water down the chimney. When I cleaned the cap I noticed it was buckled (not sure you can tell in the photo but it is no longer flat) and apparent heat discolouration. Is that normal; it wasn't this way last year when i cleaned. I tend to be lazy and clean at the begging of the burning season. I did let the stove and chimney get a bit hot last year one time; STT was at 700F; can't remember the stove pipe. The chimney appears fine. Why would the clean-out cap get as hot as it apparently did; with the stains and buckling. Any worries I should have? I shined a torch up the chimney and it seemed nice and smooth and round from the bottom to the top. I could look again to be sure.
What's the other side look like? Have not seen this before. If it's warped, it would be due to heat not rain. It's interesting. I would say if it is solid/sound it's okay to use as long as you are not forcing it in with a hammer. How much soot do you have when you do a regular clean out?
I can't really say how much soot. When I looked the chimney was open and looked good. The soot went flying everywhere, including all over me. I need to figure out a way to have the soot flying; maybe a plastic garbage bag and a hole for the chimney cleaner. As for the other side, here is a photo. No, the cap twisted back in place easily.
My friend taped a garbage bag around his stove pipe, it kept the mess down a lot. It's been a long time since he had that set up, but what I recall was he did exactly that. Get the brush started and tape the bag up, put a small hole in the bag to add poles, the bag kept most of the mess contained.
Yep, that cap got quite hot. It might have been during your one very hot burn, and perhaps some embers went into the flue and fell on top of that cap; that would explain what might have caused it to get so hot. As to the water in the chimney, you could drill or punch a very small weep hole in the cap to allow the water to drain out in the future.... I mean really small, like 1/16" or so. Even better, pull the cap off the bottom of the chimney whenever you get a lot of rain combined with very strong winds to drain it manually. My thought is that as long as the bottom of the chimney (thimble I assume) is not warped or [heat discolored] like that cap is, all is well. From what I have seen, when a S.S. chimney is extremely overheated, such as during a chimney fire, the inside pipe buckles and 'wrinkles' and it is easily seen looking into the pipe. If your inside chimney pipe looks smooth and round, odds are you are fine, at least IMO. Brian
I agree...a good visual inspection should give you what you need to know. You can always do a few small to medium fires and see how it goes. I think you will be fine. When I go to clean/inspect my set up (a T with a plug in the bottom) I put a trash bag around the bottom of the T then just use the trash bag like a glove and pull it out, generally not an issue...but when I sweep I do know down about 1/4 to 1/2 a coffee can of crap...It's on the back side and it's in the country...so, I don't really worry about it in my situation.
Good to see you here again Kimberly ! I don't think I would worry about any of that, but the drain hole probably is a good idea.
