How to clean the chimney with your own hands - tools and

It is considered that stove heating is a lot of remote areas of the Russian hinterland, where gas has not yet been spent. In fact, not a country house can do without a stove in a bath or a fireplace, where the stove has a nice evening to spend. The use of each of these devices without compliance with safety technology carries a potential fire hazard. Therefore, today's article will tell you why there are blockages in the pipe, how to clean the chimney with your own hands and prevent fire.

Causes of blockages

At first glance, it is difficult to understand where in the bath or the stove to take so many layers of soot, because during combustion only smoke comes out. However, during combustion, other combustion products are released into the atmosphere. Mainly, it is soot, the smallest particles of carbon remaining during the combustion of wood in the furnace. A lot stands out when wood heating resins, essential oils and carbon monoxide. Chimney cleaning is required more often if the operation of fireplaces and stoves in the bath is not correct. The following factors accelerate the pollution process:

1. Type of wood. Although it is difficult for a layman to wean one type of wood from another, their value as a combustible material is very different. Firewood from coniferous trees is absolutely not suitable for stoves and fireplaces, because they contain a large amount of tar, which, getting into the chimney, settle on its walls in the form of a sticky layer, acting as a magnet for soot. In addition, coniferous wood is by no means a leader in heat transfer, unlike hardwood.
2. Firewood preparation. The owners often throw firewood or freshly chopped firewood into the furnace stoves in the bath, which is absolutely contraindicated. Note that the moisture content of raw wood is higher than that of ready-to-use wood. Increased moisture content leads to the active formation of condensate deposited in the chimney stove. A wetted wall of the pipe stimulates accelerated soot sedimentation, leading to clogging.
3. Inappropriate use. A person does not notice how much waste is left after his life. Therefore, from time to time there is a temptation to send something not intended for her to the furnace stove in the bath or in the kitchen: candy wrapper, food wrapper, bottles and other garbage. Do not forget that the furnace is not designed for the disposal of household waste. Burning plastic, food remains causes the release of a huge amount of fat, tar, esters, toxic fumes. Often, improper use of the stove means that cleaning the chimney with your own hands is inevitable.

One common reason for the appearance of layers in the chimney, made by hand, is an error in the calculations and the design of the pipe in the bath. Long horizontal sections, an abundance of sharp turns, the wrong choice of pipe section - all of these are potential causes of blockages and sedimentation of soot. Cleaning a chimney made by an amateur is needed more often.

Consequences of chimney clogging

The excessive layering of soot on the chimney of the stove does not simply impede the work of the wood heating system, it causes many dangerous consequences:

• A raid of soot on the walls of the chimney reduces the useful section of the chimney, because of which the draft is sharply reduced. With a low thrust force, smoke moves in the opposite direction, leaving through the firebox and causing smoke and associated carbon monoxide poisoning.
• The deposition of soot creates a thermal insulating layer inside the pipe, which reduces the efficiency of the heat-generating device and the increase in heating costs.
• Pipe clogs, consisting of soot and debris, are often the cause of a fire in homes with stove heating. They can catch fire from a spark that has accidentally flown out of the firebox if you do not know how to clean the chimney with your own hands.
• The most dangerous thing is that the clogging of the chimney is an avalanche: low draft causes condensate to settle on the inner surface of the pipe, which is “arched” with sticky resins, therefore, soot build-ups form more quickly. In order not to urgently look for a chimney sweep, it is important to know the means of how to clean the chimney with your own hands.

According to the EMERCOM of Russia, more than half of the fires in private homes occur through the fault of an uncleaned chimney pipe. Ignition of such a force easily absorbs the house and spreads to neighboring buildings, depriving people of life and property!

Mechanical cleaning

If you could not find a professional chimney sweep, you will have to roll up your sleeves and take care of the chimney with your own hands. To do this, there is a proven tool - oven ruff, a device assembled from a metal brush, a weight and a long cord with a handle. To eliminate the blockage inside the chimney from the roof, it is required:

1. If you are going to clean the pipe on the roof using a ruff, follow safety precautions, work only with insurance, with all personal protective equipment.
2. Before using the oven ruff, it is necessary to remove the protective umbrella or deflector from the pipe. Using a brush, remove debris and dust from the accessible part of the channel. Note that for the chimney made of metal, you can use the brush only with plastic brushes.
3. To break the initial blockage with their own hands, they use a brushless brush. The load on the rope is lowered inside the chimney shaft, trying by all means to remove the layers of soot.
4. When the place of the blockage is cleared a little, you need to equip the ruff with brushes and lower it to the desired depth. This is followed by a routine, monotonous work - the rope with the load goes down and stretches up, while the ruff brushes the layers of soot from the pipe. To clear a strong blockage with your own hands will take a lot of time.
5. Periodically, the state of the chimney is checked in places where audits are installed, removing fallen ash and debris from there.
6. After the chimney ruff raises the chimney to the first sharp turn, mechanical cleaning of the chimney from above becomes ineffective. However, you can still get to the blockage through the door of the revision or the firebox. To do this, use a specialized tool - ruff on a flexible fiberglass rod.

Please note that before cleaning the chimney with your own hands, you need to close all revisions and hatches, and it is better to close the damper of the furnace additionally with a damp cloth that will protect the room from being contaminated by ash during operation.

Chemical cleaning

If you use the ruff too much you do not like, you can use dry cleaning of the chimney as a preventive measure to prevent blockages. The principle of this method is the chemical and physical effects on soot sediment inside the chimney. The removal of layers by chemical means occurs by burning in the furnace a pile, a briquette or a box with special additives that react with the resins deposited on the pipe, making them fragile and brittle. It is enough to carry out this procedure 1 time in 1.5-2 months or before cleaning the chimney with your own hands.

To save money, you can clean the pipe with folk remedies, the mechanism of which is similar to the effect of purchased chemicals. In order to soften the thick tar-black sediments, our great-grandmothers sprinkled ordinary table salt on the firewood when the furnace was kindled. And just a couple of naphthalene tablets, abandoned during burning, will help to cope with old layers, soot along with the smoke will come out through the pipe. But the simplest thing you can do for your chimney is to heat the alder from time to time. Firewood from this tree will not heat the house, but its evaporation and short-term will help to keep the pipe clean.

Video instruction