In February 2012, only a few months after we moved in, I had a stovepipe fire here in the Lair. It didn’t last long, did no damage, was caused by circumstances that no longer exist, and scared the living crap out of me. For years thereafter I was extremely uncomfortable building a fire in the woodstove. And since wood is the only heat source the Lair is even designed for, that was a problem.
The only way I could cope at all, for the first winter after the fire, was to clean the stovepipe obsessively. At least once a week, more often every 3-4 days. I cleaned it every time the forecast suggested the weather would stay cold enough to burn wood during the day. Seriously, I cleaned it whenever I had a few spare minutes. It was ridiculous.
The following winters were a bit better but a really good roaring fire could still cause my heart to go pitty-pat. Only now, almost five years after the fire, have I ever exceeded a once-a-month interval. On this day, January 12 2017, almost five years after the fire, I actually went six weeks between cleanings. I think my phobia is finally officially behind me.
All clean.
That pitti-pat feeling is normal just like getting back on a horse that has tossed you off. I’m glad you managed to not let this throw you and that everything’s mostly going OK. Speaking of OK, how is that rotator cuff issue coming along?
Ya…every 3 or 4 days may have been a little bit excessive. Generally once at the beginning of a burn season is plenty.
I have had two stoves and pipes in my barn/shop for over twelve years. Neither of them have ever been cleaned. They usually rust out after three and need replacing anyhow. At that point there is no detectable creosote build up in them. Run them hard and fast and they clean themselves.
Every season at least once I check the stovepipe at Landlady’s house, and it has never been anything but absolutely clean. She’s got a short run of double-wall pipe and runs her stove really hot.
I, on the other hand, have a fourteen-footer on a stove that frequently burns cool. I’m not saying it’s really necessary to clean the thing every six weeks – let alone every three or four days – but I sure swept up a lot of soot this morning.
After my worst bike wreck, I was skittish for a long time; it took discipline to not grab all the brakes I could whenever a vehicle looked like it would dodge left in front of me (the action which crippled me up in the first place).
I’m still hyper-aware of left-turners ahead, but I should have been that way all along. At least I’ve reached a point at which I don’t actually have to suppress fear when I see a left-turn signal, or worse, a non-blinking vehicle that seems about to do so.
Congratulations, Joel! I know it feels good to think you might be taking mastery of such things.
You get the build-up, which is mostly creosote, from burning green wood. You primarily burn pallets which are a long ways from green. In fact they are probably cured twice over. No creosote there. Probably barely any soot. Light that sucker off and let it run hot.
But if he does that, Mike, his super-insulated Lair will become hotter than a Russian sauna loaded with Maria Sharapova clones, and Joel will have to strip down to his birthday suit. Can you imagine what that would do to poor LB’s brain???
First lawl at mark above…
Second J. Will you explain further what caused your phobia and what went wrong with your wood burning stove and chimney. Pipe. I want to build a hermit house for my self maybe in alaska… But now im scared about the wood burning stove… I thought it was safe… Reliable. I need to know more how is land ladys so short but yours is 15 footer?
Kyle, here is a picture of the Lair showing the stovepipe as it comes out of the roof. The Lair is absurdly tall for its square footage because I put in a big loft. Then even after the stove pipe exists the roof it still has to clear the peak to get the cap into clean air and avoid swirl and clutter pushing wind back down the pipe. Hence I end up with a stovepipe some 14′ long. It’s hard for my little stove to get all that pipe hot enough to draw well, especially since all but 2′ of it is single-wall.
Landlady’s set-up is different. She’s got a larger potbelly stove on top of maybe six feet of double-wall. Her stovepipe heats up fast and stays hot. The only problem she has is with swirl, because she has a flat roof with parapets and the pipe doesn’t stick up over the tallest parapet. So sometimes on windy days her house fills with smoke, and mine doesn’t.
When I first built the Lair I had a home-made steel stove somebody gave me. I think in hindsight it was made for forced air, because it didn’t draw well at all. Fire never burned well in that stove, it mostly just smoldered. Plus it used an 8″ pipe which never got hot. Also I exclusively burned juniper. By February I had an enormous build-up of creosote waiting to catch fire. You’d have to be born very unlucky to make all the mistakes I made in the same winter. I’m just happy the cabin didn’t burn down.