How often do you clean your chimney?

[Country Lady]

We have a fireplace insert and use it for our main heat. We have to hire a chimney cleaner to clean the chimney for us. We've used three different ones and they all say to clean every two years, but due to my paranoia, we usually get someone out to clean it every year. The wood we burn is mostly well seasoned. I'm curious how often others clean your chimneys.

[chickenslayer]

I'm kind of anal when it comes to the chimney, we have a woodstove and I run the brush through the pipe at least once a month during the winter.

[haypoint]

Depends on the heating system and the kind of wood you burn. A chimney that goes through the center of a house and burns hot well seasoned wood won't build much creasote. A hot water boiler, a chimney that is mostly outside, smoltering fires or damp wood, will need cleaned oput a couple times a year if you burn much wood.

I burned 10 pulp cords of well seasoned wood in a water boiler with an interior chimney and once a year was enough.

You can check build-up with a hand held mirror in the cleanout door

[Rick]

Some factors that influence the answer: how far is it from insert to the top, is it straight up, is the pipe tripple wall, do you burn a hot fire for 30 or more minutes to start.

An annual inspection would probably be good. I'd look for the sweep willing to inspect, possibly in conjunction with with cleaning gutters or some other fall task.

[Silvaticus]

The fire chief comes out every fall before we have our first fire and inspects the chimney. We clean the masonry part of the chimney every fall and clean out the stove pipe at least twice in the winter.

[rancher1913]

about once a month---but it only takes me about ten minutes. if I had to pay, probably once a year

[SquashNut]

We pay to have it done in the fall before first fire. But have to clean the pipe several times a winter our selves.

[jwal10]

Twice a year, not much to clean. I build small fires as the cabin is so small. It is a wood cook stove and we do a lot of baking....James

[tinknal]

I used to clean chimneys. I've seen chimneys that needed to be cleaned 3 times a year, and I've seen them that never needed to be cleaned.

Fireplaces tend to be inefficient and the smoke is usually to hot for creosote to condense before it leaves the chimney.

[Harry Chickpea]

Twice a year here. Ours doesn't have a smoke shelf, so it is a pretty easy task.

[Jennifer L.]

Mine is a 14' straight run. I could probably get away with never cleaning it at all because I only get about a cup of soot out of it each time. But I clean it every two years just the same.

Jennifer

[Ozarks Tom]

Having had a chimney fire years ago, once a year without fail. By the way, it does sound like you have a freight train in your fireplace during a chimney fire. Molten balls of creosote shooting out your chimney. I put ours out by wetting a blanket in the bathtub and holding it in front of the chimney to stop the air flow.

[Cabin Fever]

We burn oak that has seasoned for a minimum of two years. We burn a hot fire every morning to burn out any creosote that may have accumulated during the night. Our SS chimney is mostly in the house and a straight run. We heat about 50% or so with firewood. The chimney is brushed once a year and hardly any creosote has accumulated, just a ~1/2 cup of dusty stuff.

[Ramblin Wreck]

I had mine cleaned for the first time in ten years last Fall, and not a cup full of material (and most of that was dust) came out of the process. My chimney is a long straight run almost entirely inside the house, and I burn seasoned wood. Once a year I burn one of those chimney cleaner/creosote remover logs, but I'm not sure those things do any good.

[wvstuck]

I usually clean mine every month or two during the burning season. We always start with a hot fire, but it choked back most of the day and the damper is closed all night to keep a nice long burn... Single wall pipe runs straight up to the pass through box at the ceiling and then triple wall through the attic and all the way to the cap.

Mostly is is clean when I run the brush through it, we try to burn nothing but 2 year seasoned hard woods in the stove... Never burning Christmas paper or other trash... The wood stove is for seasoned wood only... We heat entirely with wood.

[swollen tongue]

I clean mine once a year and get about 4 cupfuls of grey ash. I have a Quadra fire stove and burn pine that is seasoned. The chimmney is a straight run thru the peak of the house and I do heat my house with it about 98% during the winter.I do not bank the stove for the nite and I build a fire each morning for the day. Temps stay around 71 degrees during the day and cools down at nite to around 55-58 degrees, even during below zero weather. I like a cooler house at nite and this system and stove works really well.People ask me if I use my wood stove during the winter because they never see smoke coming from the chimmney, thats because Quadra fire stoves have a system that reburns the gases before they go up the chimmney........it really works!!!!

[highlands]

No need to clean the chimney. Just build a new house after it burns down.

[YuccaFlatsRanch]

My chimney is only about 18-20 feet tall and is 8 feet of single wall inside the great room and 10-12 feet of stainless triple wall the rest of the way to the cap. I burn very dry oak, some kiln dried fir and some very dry Texas Mountain Cedar for maybe a total of 30 days during the winter. I burn maybe 1/2 cord per year. I don't burn all night except for maybe 2-3 times a winter if it is really cold. I have been doing this for the last 11 years and each year when I check the chimney it is shiny silver. I have never cleaned it.

[Qhorseman]

Clean mine twice a year, at the beginning of the burning season to make sure nothing has found it way into my chimney, at the end of the season. I always let my first load of wood in the morning burn hot before damping down the fire for a normal burn. I burn nothing but seasoned hardwoods.

[kasilofhome]

Goal First Sat of each month.
Reality every 4 to 6 weeks

SS metalbestis 28 feet high. (basement placement and catherdral ceiling) straight run
center of the home. Wood -spruce bark beetle killed YEARS ago spruce
Large wood stove that is also the hot water and radiant infloor heat and cooking stove.
Lots of crude but easy to clean from the inside.