chimney sweeping

[colin loach]

dear all I have a Morse squirrel fire, dose anyone know our often I have to sweep the chimney and the fire it self, and when will I know if blocked, also our do I do it and what do i use. can i burn my off cuts of ply wood, Many thanks colin.

Edited December 29, 2008 by colin loach

[bottle]

Chimney at least every six months, beginning of lighting (Autumn) and when finished with (spring).

 

The one at the beginning of season is to check it is clear and the one at the end of season is to clean it.

 

The throat plate should be done at the same time.

 

If this routine is carried out it should not block but a reduction in 'draw' would be an indication.

 

Any propriety 'chimney brush set' available at different outlets (google search) of the right size brush would do.

 

Or if desperate a few holly branches.

[colin loach]

thanks for the information. dont sound to hard to do for the wife.(she gets all the good jobs)

[John Orentas]

I always had a woodburning stove, keeping the chimney clear is more a matter of scraping than sweeping, many years ago I constructed a long handled implement from a broom handle with a brass blade fixed to the business end, three inches in width with a radius to roughly fit the inside proportions of the chimney/flue pipe.

 

Needed doing probably four times per year, the tool is inserted from above, with woodburners it is important not to attempt to burn plastic bags or similar as they will form a tarry sort of deposit on all the flue surfaces with are sometimes very difficult to shift..

 

Stoves will usually have an internal baffle plate to extend the route of the gasses, it is important to get your arm up there and have a sweep round.

[colin loach]

I always had a woodburning stove, keeping the chimney clear is more a matter of scraping than sweeping, many years ago I constructed a long handled implement from a broom handle with a brass blade fixed to the business end, three inches in width with a radius to roughly fit the inside proportions of the chimney/flue pipe.

 

Needed doing probably four times per year, the tool is inserted from above, with woodburners it is important not to attempt to burn plastic bags or similar as they will form a tarry sort of deposit on all the flue surfaces with are sometimes very difficult to shift..

 

Stoves will usually have an internal baffle plate to extend the route of the gasses, it is important to get your arm up there and have a sweep round.

can i burn off cuts of ply wood

[John Orentas]

can i burn off cuts of ply wood

 

 

No problem there, many people are very sniffy about what kinds of wood they will use, personally I never paid for a piece of wood in my life, the average small factory throws out enough timber packing materials to keep half a dozen boats warm and if you are at all crafty you can usually find a chap to cut it up for you..

 

The glues in ply and painted surfaces are never a problem, the best types wood is the free stuff.

[colin loach]

No problem there, many people are very sniffy about what kinds of wood they will use, personally I never paid for a piece of wood in my life, the average small factory throws out enough timber packing materials to keep half a dozen boats warm and if you are at all crafty you can usually find a chap to cut it up for you..

 

The glues in ply and painted surfaces are never a problem, the best types wood is the free stuff.

thanks John for that, i have so much scrap wood it did not make sence to through it all away.Colin.

[Mac of Cygnet]

I always had a woodburning stove, keeping the chimney clear is more a matter of scraping than sweeping, many years ago I constructed a long handled implement from a broom handle with a brass blade fixed to the business end, three inches in width with a radius to roughly fit the inside proportions of the chimney/flue pipe.

 

Needed doing probably four times per year, the tool is inserted from above, with woodburners it is important not to attempt to burn plastic bags or similar as they will form a tarry sort of deposit on all the flue surfaces with are sometimes very difficult to shift..

 

Stoves will usually have an internal baffle plate to extend the route of the gasses, it is important to get your arm up there and have a sweep round.

 

John clearly knows what he's talking about here - woodburning deposits are much harder to shift than ordinary soot, although if you burn a mixture it shouldn't be too bad. The stuff you sweep out (down) will probably land on top of the baffle plate, if there is one, but on most stoves this is easily removable.

 

If you go down the entirely wood burning route, as I have, and your stove has a grate designed to burn coal or similar, it may be worth while either removing the grate (but you must put a protective layer of (say) firebricks on the metal stove base) or lay a metal plate on the grate. Wood likes a bed of ash to burn on, not a draught through from below. (Having said that, I haven't done either - you have to find out how your paricular stove performs with wood).

 

Enjoy the free fuel!

 

Mac

[colin loach]

John clearly knows what he's talking about here - woodburning deposits are much harder to shift than ordinary soot, although if you burn a mixture it shouldn't be too bad. The stuff you sweep out (down) will probably land on top of the baffle plate, if there is one, but on most stoves this is easily removable.

 

If you go down the entirely wood burning route, as I have, and your stove has a grate designed to burn coal or similar, it may be worth while either removing the grate (but you must put a protective layer of (say) firebricks on the metal stove base) or lay a metal plate on the grate. Wood likes a bed of ash to burn on, not a draught through from below. (Having said that, I haven't done either - you have to find out how your paricular stove performs with wood).

 

Enjoy the free fuel!

 

Mac

I burn wood during the day and coal at night when we go to bed, i keep the fire down low so it stays on wright through the night.

[sueb]

I burn wood during the day and coal at night when we go to bed, i keep the fire down low so it stays on wright through the night.

We do the same and we use a short scafold pole to clean our chimey, probably every month or so, but we do burn a lot of rubbish.

MOST IMPORTANT have a carbon monoxide alarm. We have a digital one bought from B & Q it has saved our lives at least 3 times and it gives an early warning to trouble.

Sue

[Andy Woods]

Quick and easy method....tape the brush (from your dustpan and brush) to the'wrong' end of the handle of a sweeping brush.....stuff down chimney and sweep as necessary! Assuming there are no bends inthe chimney!

[John K]

Advise for my neighbour please, he has Morso Squirrel with back boiler and smoke hood fitted. Having swept the chimney, how are the deposits removed when the gap between boiler and top of stove is very small. With smoke hood fitted it is impossible to get hand in to clear soot etc. Have looked at all Morso related website advise but found nothing of use. Is it possible to take grate out and allow soot etc to fall down the back into bottom of stove?

 

Edited to say... a cleaner nozzle will not fit either!

Edited December 29, 2008 by John K

[alan_fincher]

MOST IMPORTANT have a carbon monoxide alarm. We have a digital one bought from B & Q it has saved our lives at least 3 times and it gives an early warning to trouble.

If you are serious about that, and not being melodramatic, I'd not want to have one carbon monoxide alarm, but several

 

Any piece of cheap electronics, (which is what they are), can fail, so I'd want (I think) multiple backups.

 

I shudder to thing how a properly installed and maintained solid fuel stove could have put you in a life threatening situation on three different occasions.

 

If it were mine, I'd want to be changing it, repairing it or modifying how I was using it.

 

I see a CO alarm as a last ditch life saver, not something that I should be relying on to keep me in the land of the living.

 

Alan

[sueb]

If you are serious about that, and not being melodramatic, I'd not want to have one carbon monoxide alarm, but several

 

Any piece of cheap electronics, (which is what they are), can fail, so I'd want (I think) multiple backups.

 

I shudder to thing how a properly installed and maintained solid fuel stove could have put you in a life threatening situation on three different occasions.

 

If it were mine, I'd want to be changing it, repairing it or modifying how I was using it.

 

I see a CO alarm as a last ditch life saver, not something that I should be relying on to keep me in the land of the living.

 

Alan

Due to the rubbish burnt on our rayburn it was prone to have falls of soot. These usually occurred after lighting the stove when it had been out for awhile. Deaths do occur due to carbon monoxide on boats with solid fuel stoves.

Sue

[alan_fincher]

Deaths do occur due to carbon monoxide on boats with solid fuel stoves.

Absolutely, although nearly all are avoidable, and should be so, even if no CO alarm were fitted.

 

I'm not playing down the dangers, and we have two different CO alarms.

 

But if either was alerting in a serious way, I'd scrap or repair whatever it was that was doing it PDQ, and certainly not wait for it to happen again.

 

But then I know you are "trashing" your Rayburn, so hopefully you'll be at a lot less risk from it's replacement.

 

Alan.

[carlt]

Due to the rubbish burnt on our rayburn it was prone to have falls of soot. These usually occurred after lighting the stove when it had been out for awhile. Deaths do occur due to carbon monoxide on boats with solid fuel stoves.

Sue

If you are burning rubbish, on your burner, then I'd double up on your CO alarms (then buy a back up).

 

The alarm kicking off three times would be telling me that I am doing something very wrong, indeed. It's also saying "I might not go off, next time!"

 

I had a 100 year old Caledonian range, on Lucy and the CO alarms only ever sounded when I tested them.

[NB Alnwick]

Advise for my neighbour please, he has Morso Squirrel with back boiler and smoke hood fitted. Having swept the chimney, how are the deposits removed when the gap between boiler and top of stove is very small. With smoke hood fitted it is impossible to get hand in to clear soot etc. Have looked at all Morso related website advise but found nothing of use. Is it possible to take grate out and allow soot etc to fall down the back into bottom of stove?

 

Edited to say... a cleaner nozzle will not fit either!

 

We have a specially made 'low profile' scraper tool that just fits the gap and which we use to pull the soot off the top of the back boiler and deflector plate.

[sueb]

We have a specially made 'low profile' scraper tool that just fits the gap and which we use to pull the soot off the top of the back boiler and deflector plate.

This sounds like the tool we have for getting ash from the back of the ash box. It also fits the self draining gullys that hold the rear deck.

Sue

[boaterphil]

This sounds like the tool we have for getting ash from the back of the ash box. It also fits the self draining gullys that hold the rear deck.

Sue

Having lived on my boat for 7 years and now back in a house for the winter my squirel stove ha sbeen my best friend i have never spent much money on solid fuel this is better than coal i have burnt much wood an d i sweep the chimney every month and i use a wire bruush taped to a boat pole i take the baffle plate out of the fire seal it up close the vents and put newspaper in the where the fire burns the procedeto clean the flue from the outside all the soot goes onto the newspaper job done u can clean the glass with ash and a damp cloth i use extra fire bricks in my stove also and i am as warm as toast if i use solid fuel its just to start the fire and give it a base then i top up with wood harwood is the best if you can get it, i usually have a fire from november to march then i use electric heating during the week and lightb the fire at the weekends i still have the origanal grate in the fire and my boat is 9 years old i also respray every year with the special heat proof paint and it looks as good as new i also seal the joints with silicon not fire cement and have never had any problems

[Baloo]

We seem to have to sweep the flue every fortnight... the stove is an Aarrow Ecoburn 5 with a 4" flue, I don't know if this is because our flue has a'dog leg' in it ie two opposing bends in it of approx 15 degrees which might encourage soot to deposit in the flue.

We use softwood scraps and offcuts from the cabinet making, also chopped up pallets to get the stove going. Once lit we then burn regular house coal, as the ovals we found to burn longer but not put out much heat.

A stanley knife blade used as a scraper does a good job of cleaning up the glass on the stove door.

 

Re the CO alarm:

Is my thinking that CO is heavier than air wrong? since the instructions for our CO alarm say to mount it on the ceiling?

[sueb]

We seem to have to sweep the flue every fortnight... the stove is an Aarrow Ecoburn 5 with a 4" flue, I don't know if this is because our flue has a'dog leg' in it ie two opposing bends in it of approx 15 degrees which might encourage soot to deposit in the flue.

We use softwood scraps and offcuts from the cabinet making, also chopped up pallets to get the stove going. Once lit we then burn regular house coal, as the ovals we found to burn longer but not put out much heat.

A stanley knife blade used as a scraper does a good job of cleaning up the glass on the stove door.

 

Re the CO alarm:

Is my thinking that CO is heavier than air wrong? since the instructions for our CO alarm say to mount it on the ceiling?

As our CO alarm has a digital readout ours is at the same height as hubby's head, when seated, thus I can see it everytime I look up.

Sue

[Mac of Cygnet]

Re the CO alarm:

Is my thinking that CO is heavier than air wrong? since the instructions for our CO alarm say to mount it on the ceiling?

 

Carbon Monoxide (CO) is about the same density as air, and will be carried up in warm air, which is why the alarm should be mounted high.

 

Carbon Dioxide (CO2), which you breathe out, is heavier than air, but not enough that it would sink and collect, like LPG, an alarm for which should be mounted at floor level.

 

Mac

[Baloo]

Carbon Monoxide (CO) is about the same density as air, and will be carried up in warm air, which is why the alarm should be mounted high.

 

Carbon Dioxide (CO2), which you breathe out, is heavier than air, but not enough that it would sink and collect, like LPG, an alarm for which should be mounted at floor level.

 

Mac

thanks Mac

I think the best thing for us to do would be to have two alarms, since our boat is "tug" style with our bed under the front deck.

will put one alarm on the head board and one in the main cabin then.

[NB Alnwick]

We seem to have to sweep the flue every fortnight... the stove is an Aarrow Ecoburn 5 with a 4" flue, I don't know if this is because our flue has a'dog leg' in it ie two opposing bends in it of approx 15 degrees which might encourage soot to deposit in the flue.

 

This seems to me like an excessive build up of soot or possibly a mixture of soot and tar and I would recommend further investigation to ascertain the cause of the problem.

 

As a benchmark, there are no soot or tar deposits in the straight and vertical four inch flu of our Morso Squirrel stove; we burn pure Anthracite and get through about 40 bags a year, living aboard most of the time and all of the time during the Winter.

 

We last needed to clean the flu in January 2006.

 

The clean burning characteristics of Anthracite are well known but it does cost between £6 and £10 for a 25 kg. bag (depending on your supplier and where you live) but even lesser fuels (even wood) can be made to burn sufficiently efficiently to minimise soot and tar deposits.

 

The production of dark smoke and a build up of soot or tar are symptoms of poor combustion. The gases produced by poor combustion can be harmful or even fatal.

Edited January 3, 2009 by NB Alnwick

[Mac of Cygnet]

This seems to me like an excessive build up of soot or possibly a mixture of soot and tar and I would recommend further investigation to ascertain the cause of the problem.

 

........even lesser fuels (even wood) can be made to burn sufficiently efficiently to minimise soot and tar deposits.

 

The production of dark smoke and a build up of soot or tar are symptoms of poor combustion. The gases produced by poor combustion can be harmful or even fatal.

 

There are a few specialist woodburners which claim to be smokeless, using a third air control high on the stove, but I have my doubts. It is virtually impossible to avoid the production of tar and soot when burning wood in most stoves with the stove shut down for any length of time, especially when burning a mixture of offcuts, pallets, etc which Baloo is doing during the day. I would suggest that alternating wood and coal may make the problem worse, as tar and soot will form layers which could not only be thicker but fall back down and block the bend.

 

All fuels will produce carbon monoxide when the air supply is limited, as when the stove is shut down. This is OK, as it normally goes up the flue to the outside. Only when the flue is blocked does it become dangerous as it leaks out of the stove to the interior of the boat/room. Smokeless fuels are therefore inherently more dangerous than wood because the stove leakage is invisible; wood will almost always produce smoke at the same time. This is one of the reasons why I burn only wood (apart from being free), but I inspect and/or sweep the flue at least once a week, AND have a CO alarm, whose green blinks every minute are comforting as I fall asleep beside the stove.

 

Mac