Cleaning The Chimney

I live in the village of Chaumont, NY. IT is located ten miles from the Canadian border. So it is quite a northern community. As such, the temperatures have diminished the past few days of September, reminding us that the REAl COLD WEATHER OF wINTER ISN'T THAT FAR OFF. So... today I cleaned our wood stove chimney. This Winter will be the fourth one in which we have burned wood in a wood stove. So the sove & chimney are relatively new. The first two Winters I did a visual check of the chimney and dismanteled the stove pipe that leads into the chimney at least three times during the heating season. It was SO CLEAN and free of creasote that last Winter (3), I didn't take it apart for a cleaning. I did do several visual inspections of the chimney though.



Anyway, today I took a brush to the chimney and dry scrubbed it pretty thoroughly. I had a plastic bag attached to the base of it to collect all of the dislodged soot. What you see in this photo is the entire amount of what came out of the chimney. This is from an ENTIRE heating season in which we burned about 14 face cord of wood. The stove pipe inside the house was equally clean with littled build up of ash or soot. So we will continue this Winter as we did last year: Start each day with a HOT fire, feed it as needed through the day, ocassionaly letting it burn hot. About once a month do a visual check looking up into the chimney and leave it at that. So it is that we begin to prep for Winter here in the North Country.