TESTING CHEMICAL CHIMNEY CLEANERS

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A typical test series began with the cleaning and weighing of each and every test section of the chimneys. Then, after the stovepipe had been reassembled, the stoves were loaded and lighted. A normal evaluation run consisted of firing for 8 to 12 hours per day, five days a week, with an average of three loads of wood being burned daily. The power output, wood type and moisture content, cleaner dosage, and length of test series were varied over a full seven months of testing.

Stack temperatures were continuously monitored, to insure that the stoves were all running alike, and to identify any chimney fires that occurred (since the ignition of deposits would have altered the creosote in the chimney and affected the weights that were being checked).

CONCLUSIONS

The particular brands of chemical chimney cleaners that we chose didn't show any substantial effectiveness in our tests. We burned both oak and pine (using seasoned and green wood separately) in both cool and hot fires, and tried using normal and larger-than-normal applications of each product. We looked for signs of any prevention of creosote buildup or of its disappearance once formed ... for evidence of its failing in flakes down the chimneys ... and for changes in either the creosote's brushability or its flammability. Although we did see some such transformations take place, they were just as evident in the untreated systems as they were in the treated ones. Thus we don't attribute any of the positive effects to the chemicals themselves, but rather think that factors such as temperature, which were common to all the systems, played the major role in changing the nature of, or reducing, creosote.

In fact, in our tests, temperature was clearly a more important contributor to the reduction of creosote accumulation than was the use of any one of the chemical chimney cleaners. In general, relatively small, hot fires tend to be cleaner-burning (producing less smoke) than do largefuel load, smoldering fires ... thereby substantially lessening the rate of creosote buildup in the first place. And, once a tar glaze has formed in the chimney, a hot fire tends to transform it into a dry, flaky deposit ...which is light in weight, may fall off the chimney walls of its own accord, and (even if it does not drop) is much easier to brush away than the original gooey creosote. (See the accompanying photographic representation of such changes in creosote form.)

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