# Sweep your own chimney?



## MountainKing (Jul 26, 2012)

So does anyone here sweep their own chimney? I've got a wood stove insert that I burn all winter and (ideally) I'd like to sweep the chimney myself as opposed to hiring someone to do it. My setup uses round metal pipe that runs up the brick chimney to a cap on the roof. I see sweeping setups for sale and I have no problems getting on the roof and pulling the cap off and doing it myself. I assume I can just open the damper at the bottom, close the door on the insert and brush out all the creosote and let it drop into the firebox then use my ash vac or a pan to get it out?

I don't mind paying someone to come do it, but I tend to like to learn to do things on my own when I can.

Regards,
MK


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## Grimm (Sep 5, 2012)

I'm curious about this too. We have no idea when the chimney was swept last on the house. We have some of the CSL but do those even work?


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## backlash (Nov 11, 2008)

I have done mine in the past.
I would drop a rope with a clip on it down the chimney and then connect a round metal brush to it.
Then simply pull the brush back up the pipe.
Repeat a couple of times and then sweep up the mess in the fireplace.
I should mention that I had an insert in the fireplace and there was no damper in the way.
I did have to move the stove out to clean the chimney.


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## dlharris (Apr 3, 2011)

We have done this with potato/onion sack with a bunch of rocks in it. Done the same as with metal brush but cheaper if you don't have one.


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## JustCliff (May 21, 2011)

I do my own. It's pretty much a no brainer. If you buy the brush and fiberglass rods you more then likely will never have to buy them again. I put a stainless steel liner in my chimney. it makes it even easier and you don't have to worry so much about a chimney fire.


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## UncleJoe (Jan 11, 2009)

I do ours twice a year. Once at the end of the heating season and once when we get our Jan/Feb warmup. I installed a 6", double wall, stainless steel chimney a couple years ago. At the base there is a somewhat threaded cap. It's more like a half a turn to lock it in place or remove it. I remove that cap and run the brush down through. The brush is attached to 6' threaded rods which can be put together to any length you need. When I brush, I can just let the soot fall to the ground. From the stove to the wall I have regular black stovepipe. I take that apart and take it outside to brush it out. Here is a pic of the lower, removable clean-out cap. The next one is the chimney itself.


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## MountainKing (Jul 26, 2012)

Thanks. Sounds straightforward enough. I could understand having a professional check it out for cracks or problems with the masonry inside the chimney, but I too just have a steel liner pipe. 

Thanks for the tips...
MK


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## machinist (Jul 4, 2012)

Cleaning more often is better and much easier than letting hard stuff build up in the chimney. 

We have a clay lined masonry flue that I clean about twice a year, because we have an airtight stove, and tend to want to burn it very slow. That causes more build up in the flue than if you burn shorter, hotter fires. The good side is that we use very little wood to heat our house. 

I also bought the round brush and fiberglass rods. I also made a flat steel scraper to fit the rods and welded it to a short piece of 3/8" pipe, since our rods have 3/8" STRAIGHT pipe thread, but tapered pipe threads will fit in it. This is for when I have some crusty stuff to get out, and is used like a chisel. Sometimes the brush just isn't aggressive enough. 

The amount of deposit in your flue and WHERE you find it, indicates how hot the flue gasses are when they exit the stove. Ideally, you want to get all the heat you can out of the gasses before they exit the stove, so it heats your house instead of the great outdoors. So, the flue deposits will tell you at what point the gasses have cooled enough for the crud to condense out, and you can adjust how fast you let the fire burn (adjusting how much wood you load at a time) in order to get the most efficient heating.

I like to find most of the deposits in the black stovepipe. That means I am getting all the heat I can from what I burned. When I was a kid, back in the Stone Age, airtight stoves were unknown so people often used very LONG stovepipes to get more heat from their wood. The stovepipe was a radiator. The pipes were often so long they had to be supported on the way to the chimney. That was done with soft black iron wire, still sold today for handyman uses, but originally named for its' first use, as "stovepipe wire".


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## MountainKing (Jul 26, 2012)

Thanks - and yes, we tend to "slow burn" our wood too. We have a Lopi Freedom stove and I can stack it full of wood at night, close the dampers, and it will smolder all night. The glass on the front gets sooted up, requiring frequent cleaning, and I'm sure the chimney pipe will have a good bit of creosote in it. As well, this year we burned some less than ideally seasoned wood, so that will be a factor too.

Going to order a brush today though...and hop up on the roof next week.

Thanks again for all the tips.

MK


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## k0xxx (Oct 27, 2011)

We sweep our own also (or I should say, the WIFE sweeps it) :?) We have the brush and fiberglass rods. We have a freestanding woodstove, and we disconnect the flue and tape a plastic bag in place to catch the creosote. We do this generally just in the Spring, as the amount of wood that we burn is relatively small and it's very well seasoned. If we have to use less seasoned wood, we do a quick sweep mid winter.


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