Cleaning the chimney of a stove or fireplace: folk and chemical means, instructions, videos and photos

Experienced summer residents, as well as owners of bathhouses and private houses with stove heating, know that regular cleaning of the chimney is a mandatory procedure and it is dangerous to neglect it. In this article I will try to talk in detail about how to clean the chimney in the stove of a private house in three ways. I will also explain why a clogged chimney is dangerous and how to determine the degree of its contamination.

Do-it-yourself cleaning of the chimney pipe is real.

Content

Three options for cleaning the chimney

No matter how perfect and high-quality your stove or fireplace is, soot in the smoke exhaust system will settle in any case, and there is no getting around it. Of course, you can call a professional, but this is an extreme case.

When I encountered such a problem and began to “ventilate” the issue, it turned out that it was quite possible to do everything with my own hands.

Option number 1: chemistry to help you

Our modern man, unlike his grandfathers and great-grandfathers, first of all thinks about how to clean the chimney pipe with some kind of chemistry. This is normal, because we are used to dishwashing detergents, bathroom cleaners and so on. It turns out that there are also tools for cleaning the chimney.

Diagram of how chemicals work in a fireplace chimney.

In our market, a fairly significant place is now occupied by the domestic company Dymovoy.

This manufacturer produces a whole line of products, but I will talk about the three most popular:

The first of the most famous products of this company is the so-called cleaning box. It looks like a normal box of medium size. You only need to remove the packaging plastic and put it in a burning stove or fireplace.
As the instructions say, the stove should not be heated too hot, the flame should be rather fading. Such a box will, figuratively speaking, smolder in the furnace for about an hour and a half. During this time, soft and viscous layers crystallize and slowly begin to fall off.
It is not worth waiting for a momentary result, such self-cleaning will last about 2 weeks. Light soot will fly out into the pipe, and heavy layers will fall down;

2222 Another popular product is a log from the Smokey company.Manufacturers have tried to give their product the most realistic look of an ordinary log.
From a practical point of view, the log works in the same way as the box described above. But it makes sense to take it if you are going to clean the fireplace. In an open firebox, the turquoise flame that this log gives will look very impressive. Children really like this process;

This company also has products for cleaning chimneys in solid fuel pellet boilers. The product is produced in the form of standard pellets. For normal operation of the boiler, you need to mix 1 ton of pellets with 10 kg of this product and slowly heat it with this mixture.
This tool is also suitable for conventional stoves, but here it will be necessary to burn 1 kg of the product in the furnace for 5 days in a row. According to experience, such prevention is enough for about 3 months. Plus, the price for these improvised pellets will be lower than for a box or log.

Trademark "Smoke" is far from the only major manufacturer in the domestic market. Approximately the same line of products is produced by the Chimney sweep company. The quality of these products is about the same.

Consider foreign analogues:

The German brand "Hansa" supplies its cleaning agent to our market. This product is sold in single packaging, in the form of small paper bags and in bulk packs with a measuring spoon.
The Germans focused on the fight against creosote, a viscous resinous substance that settles on pipes. As a result of chemical action, the creosote dehydrates, flakes off and falls into the furnace, where it almost completely burns out. At the same time, light particles of carbon, according to manufacturers, burn without residue;

The Czechs have been supplying us with Kominchek since the days of the Soviet Union. These are small paper bags of 14 grams in weight. Each bag is designed for 1kg of fuel.
But if earlier, when there was not much to choose from, Kominchek was still in demand, now it takes only at an affordable cost. Plus, this tool is designed exclusively for prevention, it is not able to remove soot thicker than 20 mm. And the smell of this drug is not very pleasant.

Keep in mind, chemically active chimney cleaners are universal, but only for stoves or only for fireplaces. Therefore, when buying, carefully read the instructions.

Option number 2: grandmother's recipes

Now let's talk about how to clean the chimneys in the oven with folk remedies. To be honest, you can clean the chimney from soot using grandmother's recipes. But some of these recipes are so radical that they need to be applied very carefully.

Otherwise, you will have to shift the furnace again or at least repair it.

One of the relatively simple ways is the use of boiling water. According to the rules, 3 - 4 liters of boiling water (so that it still gurgles) must be poured into the pipe immediately before kindling. The calculation is that the steam will soften the soot and it will begin to fall off. But on serious pollution, this method is ineffective.

Do not try to pour boiling water into the pipe of a well-melted furnace, you will inevitably get steam water hammer. You will be very lucky if the walls of the pipe hold up, otherwise you will have to build the pipe again. Although this also has its pluses, it will definitely be clean.

Another rather risky, but at the same time very effective way to clean the chimney from old growths and soot is to use dry aspen or alder firewood. This is perhaps one of the most ancient recipes, no one knows exactly how many hundreds of years old it is.
It is believed that the smoke from these types of wood softens the soot, and it burns out. But in order for everything to work, you need to melt the stove to the maximum, so that it buzzes. The danger is that the combustion temperature of soot in the pipe reaches 1100 ºС.
You understand, not every pipe is able to withstand such a test. In addition, flames escaping from the pipe can cause a fire;

Chimney burnt out from high temperature.

The most harmless and, by the way, very effective tool that I regularly use in the country are potato peelings. At a time, 2-3 kg of cleanings are loaded into a well-melted stove, although it can take up to a bucket for a large firebox.
In principle, it’s not so important whether it’s peelings or just finely chopped potatoes, the point is that during combustion a lot of starch is released, which destroys soot layers.
As far as I've heard, such prevention should be carried out at least once a month. Personally, I don’t measure by kilograms, the family loves potatoes and it’s just that all potato peels are burned in the firebox as they arrive;

Potato peelings as a means to combat soot.

An equally simple and safe way to clean soot from the chimney is to use table salt. Make it a rule to pour 200 - 300 g of salt on burning coals in a firebox about 1 time per week. Sodium chloride corrodes creosote;

Soot is well destroyed by aluminum vapor. You can get these vapors using ordinary beer cans.In a hot, well-heated firebox, you need to throw a few cans.
Note that the temperature should be such that the jars do not melt, namely, they burn out within a maximum of 5 to 7 minutes. This method is not recommended to be used more than once a month, because aluminum vapor, although considered relatively harmless, certainly does not add health;
There is also cleaning with naphthalene. But I don't recommend it to you. In general, they say that this is a fairly effective remedy, there you need to burn a couple of naphthalene tablets in a firebox once a week. I won’t lie, I don’t know if naphthalene cleans the chimney, but I know for sure that it stinks strongly. Moreover, the smell will be heard both in the room and on the street;

Now a few words about the use of chemicals from the piggy bank of folk wisdom. To prepare the mixture, copper sulfate, saltpeter and coal sulphate are taken, and preferably coke powder in a ratio of 5: 7: 2 (vitriol / saltpeter / coal). I suspect that something like this is sold to us for money in bags, because this product is only 20g per 100kg of fuel.

It is almost impossible to clean a heavily clogged stove or fireplace with both mass-produced and folk remedies. They can keep the chimney in good condition and nothing more. This is an effective prevention.

Option #3: When Nothing Helps

If you have tried all the passive methods of cleaning the smoke exhaust system, and there is practically no sense from your efforts, then it's time to roll up your sleeves and clean the pipe with your own hands, that is, mechanically. In theory, cleaning a pipe looks simple, but choosing the right tool is important here.

Professional cleaning of chimneys is naturally performed by a professional tool, but as you can imagine, it is expensive. Therefore, I will talk about the tool that I made myself and saw from the same home craftsmen.

Up to 10 cm or more of packed soot with creosote can accumulate on the walls of the chimney. . When you find such a “surprise”, it is already useless to use chemicals, and not every brush will take such a deposit.

In this case, you can only clean the deposit metallic scraper. When I had to deal with this problem, I wired a wide chisel to a long rod, climbed onto the roof, and scraped everything I could from inside the chimney.

The main thing here is to tear off a strong upper crust. As soon as you remove it, then it will be possible to use hard metal or plastic brushes.

Any normal, capital furnace has a so-called "coarse", along which the smoke exhaust channel winds. It is due to this design that the room receives up to 50% of heat. But you can’t clean the channels either from the side of the roof or from the side of the firebox, for this they have special hatches.

It is unrealistic to clean the channel through these hatches with a scraper. Here you need a hard, preferably a metal brush. In specialized oven stores, such a brush will not be priced. And on the market a metal cord brush is sold for an electric drill or a grinder and it costs quite reasonable money.

In order to rigidly fix such a brush, you need a rod; in a professional tool, it is fiberglass.I took the cheapest polypropylene pipe with a cross section of 20 mm, cut it into sections of 1 m each, and soldered half-inch threaded fittings along the edges of each section (father on one side, mother on the other).

Homemade collapsible rod with cord brush.

Getting a soldering iron for polypropylene pipes is not a problem now. In any housing office, for quite reasonable money, they will solder these fittings as much as you want in 15 minutes.

Thus, I got a collapsible elastic rod. By the way, not only a metal cord brush, but also the same iron scraper can be screwed onto such a rod.

And finally, the most important tool of any chimney sweep is a stiff brush on a long cable with a load suspended from below. Without it, it will be difficult to clean the chimney, as expected. I also made this device with my own hands.

Scheme of a homemade brush for cleaning the chimney.

The load suspended from below must be well centered. Ideally, a cast-iron or steel core is used here, in extreme cases, you can take some kind of cone.
But such things as dumbbells, weights or any other heavy objects of indefinite shape cannot be hung. Then they will warp in the chimney, and serious problems will begin, up to disassembling the pipe wall. I made a clay mold for this, put a metal hook in the center of the mold and filled the mold with lead;

Basic raw materials for a homemade brush.

For the brush, I adapted a plastic broom. In the upper part, the bristles in such a broom are fused into a single monolith. I drilled a hole in the center of this monolith and inserted an iron stud with a section of 8 mm into it, with a thread pre-cut along the entire length.
Then, on both sides of the stud, I put on 2 wide washers and clamped it all with two nuts.The bristles of the broom were cut open with washers, and it turned into a horizontally oriented chimney sweep brush. At the end, on both sides of the iron stud, I screwed 2 metal ears under the carabiners;

Variant of a homemade plastic broom brush.

I also made a loop at the end of the metal cable. As a result, my main chimney sweep tool consisted of 3 detachable parts: a cable, a brush on a metal pin and a round weight with a hook.

When I was actively interested in how to clean the chimney pipe with my own hands, I often came across tips to make a cleaning brush from plastic bottles. The option is certainly interesting and not expensive, but personally I do not inspire confidence in it.

I think only a person who has never done a major cleaning of large blockages himself could offer such a thing. Although if the soot layer is small, then perhaps this method will work. For those interested, I posted a video in this article.

A variant of making a brush from a plastic bottle.

Now let's take a step-by-step look at how to clean the chimney in the oven of a private house with your own hands:

Before starting work, it is advisable to cover the room with polyethylene, soot is a volatile thing and it is difficult to clean it up later. Directly the doors of the firebox or the fireplace, if you are cleaning the fireplace chimney, you need to hang it as tightly as possible with a wet cloth;
Cleaning starts with roofs. If the stove has not been heated for a long time (more than 2 weeks), then you will need to disconnect our homemade brush from a plastic broom and attach only a metal core to the cable.This core is fired first, it will knock down all the webs, and also push down small debris and bird nests, if any;
Since we agreed that we have serious pollution, then we take a metal scraper on a long pole and scrape off everything that comes out as carefully as possible;

Cleaning the pipe with a scraper on the stem.

Naturally, all these layers will fall down and, in order not to break through this mountain again from below, periodically you will have to climb down and clean out the debris through the technological window or through the furnace if the chimney is straight;

We clean the soot through the technological window.

When rough cleaning with a scraper from above is completed, you can proceed to cleaning the "coarse" channels through the technological windows. To do this, we have a metal cord brush on a hard stem;
For a perfect cleaning of the chimney, you will need to once again climb onto the roof and clean the pipe with a plastic brush with a suspended core. Of course, instead of a plastic brush with a load, you can use a cord brush on a long, stackable stem. But believe me, it is much easier to work with a soft brush with a suspension;
A horizontal brush on a rigid stackable rod, in addition to cleaning channels, is often used to clean straight stainless steel chimneys from below. There, in order not to climb onto the top, the bottom cover is removed and the entire chimney is cleaned through it.

Cleaning the stainless steel pipe from below with a brush on a collapsible stem.

Why is a chimney blockage dangerous and how to recognize it in time

To begin with, an overgrown pipe does not provide proper traction. Moreover, if the chimney is not cleaned in time, a reverse draft effect may occur. The most dangerous thing here is that carbon monoxide will go into the room.

This gas has no taste, no color, no smell and is deadly to humans.There have been cases when entire families were killed by him.

In an overgrown chimney, more condensate falls on the walls, and on its basis, soot settles even faster.

It should not be forgotten that soot is 90% carbon compounds and is not a monolithic block, but a porous substance that is a good heat insulator. For a clogged stove, you need almost 30-40% more fuel to heat the room well.

In addition, soot is nothing more than fuel that has not completely burnt out. Therefore, the more such fuel, the higher the probability of its ignition when favorable conditions occur.

According to statistics, this is the cause of fires in more than half of the cases. For the same reason, flames and sparks fly out of the pipe, which are already dangerous for the surrounding buildings.

In order to recognize the blockage of the chimney in time, you need to remember a number of simple signs:

The draft in the furnace is often regulated using a retractable damper on the pipe. So, the smaller the useful stroke of this damper, the thicker the carbon deposits on the pipe walls;
If the stove is correctly folded and the fuel is of high quality, then the smoke from the chimney will be light, and if the stove burns well, even transparent. With a clogged chimney, the smoke will be dark, with soot flakes periodically flying out of the chimney;
Plus, if the stove began to melt heavily and the flame changed color from light yellow to bright orange, it means that the fuel does not burn completely and it is time to clean the chimney from soot.

This is what high-quality pipe cleaning looks like.

Conclusion

Now you know the main signs of clogging the furnace. And most importantly, you will be able to determine which chimney cleaning, of the three proposed options, is suitable for your pipe.The photo and video in this article clearly shows the practical side of things. If you have any questions on this topic, ask them in the comments, I will try to help.

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