Haven't used my fireplace in 10 years. Heating costs are insane, electric or gas.
I want to burn some wood.
Are chimney sweeping services a scam?
>Picrel is Trudeau as a black chimney sweeper.
Can I just light my fireplace
Haven't used my fireplace in 10 years. Heating costs are insane, electric or gas.
I want to burn some wood.
Are chimney sweeping services a scam?
>Picrel is Trudeau as a black chimney sweeper.
just light a fire in it and don't overdue it
chimney sweeping is easy as frick just buy the tool and do it yourself
I figured it out at age 16 I'm sure you can
I didn't know they had kits but it's a 2 story home. I don't want any house fires.
>but it's a 2 story home
The frick does that have to do with anything? Just buy a longer handle for your brush.
we exclusively use wood to heat our home.
seasoned, chopped, split and ready-to-burn firewood can be incredibly expensive, depending on where you live, if there are trees, and what type.
we have modern heaters installed (mini-split units with heat pump) but have NEVER used them for heat. we have never turned them on. not even once.
we have three wood stoves to heat our home. one in the Great Room, one in the kitchen and one in the bedroom.
I have seen wood as low as $150/cord and all the way up to $650/cord depending on location and type.
heating with wood is not for the poor, unless you are resourceful and willing to labor for it yourself.
I paid for two cords this year, one oak, one mesquite. have managed to scavenge and gather another 2 cords for free. random types found by looking on marketplace, keeping an eye for tree trimming/removal waste on curbs and tree removal/maintenance at my job and my parents house.
next year, we will heat our home entirely for free.
Youve lived in that house for like 4 months dunning kruger
>heating with wood is not for the poor
>>as low as $150 a cord
the only wood you're getting for $150/cord is some sort of pine. those same areas are some of the coldest climates. so you're getting low BTU wood and burning 6-8 times as much for the same heat. pine is also laden with pitch, and often poorly cured when sold/used. thus leads to even lower BTU and creosote buildup.
trust me. wood heating is not for the poor, or lazy, or those in tree-less areas.
No
Unless you want to risk dying of CO poisoning
>Heating costs are insane, electric or gas.
I hate to break it to you, but fire wood costs are also insane
trees in the park are free
you can't go cutting down trees in local parks without being arrested dumbass
if you're already going to cut down somebody else's trees just start a tree cutting service and get paid to take away wood instead of stealing it
Lighten up Francis.
>wait until night
>take plates off truck
>attach tree to hitch via chain
>drive
EZ PZ
Anon it’s good you raised this subject because next winter a lot more Anons are going to be following suit.
To start - can you inspect the flue? Look up? You’re looking for blockages and creosote build up on the inside of the pipe. If you can, check the very top as well, where it exhausts to the air. Make sure there isn’t a bird nest or something.
As long as it’s clear - go nuts. And hey take this seriously because if you half ass it you could burn your whole house down. So take the time.
Going forward - you’ll want to invest in a cleaning brush. It’ll save you time, money and headache. If you burn a lot of conifer wood, creosote will build up inside the flue. If enough builds up, you will get a chimney fire and your shit will burn down.
Clean your flue once a year. Either at the end or the start of the winter season. It’s not hard. But it’s important. good luck Anons and try not to die in the coming dystopia.
depends entirely on your specific situation. If theres nothing blocking the chimney, then theres no problems. If theres dead animals in the chimney, bird nests, stashed trash from a israelite living in the tunnels under your house, or build up of soot and ash creating blockages, then what will happen is heat will accumulate in the chimney and eventually cause the chimney to become so hot it sets the surronding parts of the house on fire, causing you to save massively on heating because you will be dead.
You can buy a chimney sweep brush and clean that bad boy up pretty easily, as long as you are nimble enough to climb a ladder to your roof and not slip and have a nice day.
Chimney sweeping services are not a scam, its for old people, fat asses, cat ladies, and the like. but its not a difficult job to do yourself if you arent crippled/moronic. After all, they use to make orphan children do it.
Chimney cleaning is somewhat overrated, but not to be totally ignored. For one, most people rarely ever actually use their fireplace, just like you, so it's fairly rare that they actually are gunked up.
Step 1 would be just inspect the chimney. You'd be surprised what you can accomplish with a cell phone tied to a string. Look for heavy deposits, and crumbling or damaged chimney tile and mortar. I'd say, more than likely, the chimney is probably fine, but you definitely want to make sure.
step 2, buy a quality co detector if you plan to light a fire.
>Chimney cleaning is somewhat overrated, but not to be totally ignored
Really depends on what you're burning and how well you burn it. With the wrong wood and/or wrong technique, you can get enough creosote buildup in a single season to start a fire at the start of the next season. On the other hand it's possible to burn for many years without cleaning the chimney if you're burning clean and the buildup isn't occurring.
I have had nearly a full cm of creosote the length of the chimney one season, and other years it's barely 2mm
i heard you need to sweep your chimney once a year. We moved in to a new house and a mexican charged us $100 USD. It was so easy and quick I should have just used the $100 to buy the chimney sweep kit, maybe a big cloth, and maybe a drill and do it myself. You see, I didn't understand you can sweep it from the ground up. You don't need to climb the roof.
You can visually check if you have creosote, it's shiny
Fireplaces put off little to no heat without an insert. And even then if you dont have a fresh air inlet they pull cold from outside around doors, windows etc… Unless its been inspected its not worth the risk
>Fireplaces put off little to no heat without an insert.
Lol, whatever idiot. Fireplaces aren't the most efficient, but they definitely do put out a massive amount of heat. I had a small fire over christmas and people were taking their sweaters and stuff off it was getting so hot in our house. They're not great at diffusing that heat, because the heat they create is going to be localized to just that room for the most part, but there's definitely a reason people used them for like 10,000 years before furnaces.
They literally suck all the warm air out of the house and blow it out the chimney
This is why old fireplace heated buildings have one or more in every room
Like i already said, they do a great job of heating one room, but not so much at heating a whole house. And just because mansions have 1 fireplace per room (who have the luxury of maintaining a consistant temperature throughout the whole house), doesn't mean most every single fireplace heated house had the same, they generally had just 1 or maybe 2 if they were lucky.
Like i said though, they're not efficient at all, they require a lot of work to keep the fire going, but back in the day labor was practically free. So it's not really the "best" source of heat, but if you're willing to cut your own wood, it's doable and sustainable, just either a lot of work, or a lot of money to buy wood, for a heat source that's good in some ways, bad in others, but it is at least not dependent on the modern power/gas grid.
EXACTLY! It is a well known fact that fireplaces actually make houses colder, that's why they were used to heat houses for 99.95% of human history.
People also used to not bathe and throw their excrement out the window every morning
I'm sorry, are you suggesting I take a dump in the fireplace? Have you actually tried that?
You could still do that, you know? Wouldn't be the currently best method of waste removal, but it would actually work, and solve the problem of having harmful waste actually inside your house.
Just like a fireplace isn't really the best method for heat with all the current available options but...it still works.
t. redditors who can't into sarcasm without /s
>pretending to be moronic
Back then they didnt know any better you moronic inbred dog fricker
Right, right, there's no way they'd notice that everyone who had a fireplace in norway or icleand or something would all freeze to death every winter when they used their fireplace, and they'd, at the very least, just stop using them seeing how deadly they are.
this idiot probably confused fire places eg a hole in the wall where you make fire, with stoves,
Fireplaces were only used by rich people or where wood was abundand and construction material scare like the settlers in the us
in germany people used tilstoves for most of history since there were houses, it was a open fireplace in the kitchen to cook but the fire box was made from lots of stone and in the opposite room
Tfw you don't have bed next to tiled stove.
This. Morons don't know this. Not to mention most are on outside walls so most of their radiant heat is lost to the air outside of the house.
> fat family
Jesus christ, enough with you fricking half-wits. Fireplaces cause there to be a slight draft in the room they're in, but the amount of heat they add to the room greatly exceeds the amount of heat leaving.
>half wits
no one is arguing this except you repetitve gays missing the point
the argument is that if youre using an opd decorative fireplace to offset your heating bill, youre going to have a bad time
Yeah but they are also super inefficient.
Something like 30-50% of the BTUs from the wood just go up the chimney without heating your home.
A cast iron wood stove, even without a reburning chamber, is a much better option.
>Yeah but they are also super inefficient.
No shit, stupid. Nobody is saying they're not. Nobody is even claiming that they're a great way to heat your house in modern times. Enough with your dumb bullshit.
>A cast iron wood stove, even without a reburning chamber, is a much better option.
So...instead of just using his existing fireplace, op should buy a new cast iron stove, drill a hole in his roof and run a new flue for it, probably costing him like 2 grand at least, in order to just gain like 30%-50% efficiency?
Yes, it's a better option, over time, to invest in an insert or wood stove. Depending on the availability of fuel types, wood can be the most efficient (both heat and emission output) whet considering the other heat available. Flue temp during a fire burning at max efficiency in a fireplace is around 500F. You can sit directly on the hearth extension and not be burnt so frick off with anything beyond radiant heat in eyeshot of the fire. A fireplace
And you're completely out of touch on the price. Try $2500 for parts and labor at the cheapest and $3000-4000 for an appliance.
There's a lot of ideas that having a sweep come to do it is a waste. It definitely is if they aren't educated in the local and national standards and the CORRECT physics that apply to your system. If you decide to do it yourself and don't connect it to a dedicated liner you're taking on a lot of liability and you better be prepared to take the slammer out every time you clean it or you'll be leaving all the flammable hydrocarbons on the smoke shelf and behind/top of the stove which defeats the whole purpose of removing it from the flue.
You know, when you have to spend a ton of money to save a little money, you might want to think about what you're doing. If you live in freaking alaska and are burning wood 24/7 all year round, yeah, maybe it'd be worth it. But most people would be much better off just living with their "inefficient" fireplace, and accept the fact that no wood burners are really efficient when it comes down to it, and it's probably not all that bright to spend 7k just so you can have a 30% more efficient wood burner.
if its only grolwing coal left the efficiency is going to be negative,
But i dont tink op has a open fireplace like you think off, unless he lives in a castle, open fireplaces were outdated in the 50s, he probably already has atleast a door and a primary air regulator,
if he has a fireplace eg a huge hole in his roof he definitly should replace it, you can put a pipe in it and use the space around it to draw in combustion air which gets pre warmed and you wont create any draft in the house.
But op is a homosexual and prob doesnt read here anymore or lives in his moms basement without a stove, or he would have posted a picture what his fireplace looks like, we dont even know if op knows the difference between a stove. a chimney or a fireplace, yet we fight here over it.
You'll probably be fine just lighting the fire, and if not you'll know pretty quick if your chimney is backed up, since the stove will back up a lot of smoke.
A rather basic rule of thumb is to light a match and bring it near the air intake, if the match gets extinguished by the draft you're fine.
That said it's always good practice to have your chimney cleaned regularly. It's not terribly complex or terribly expensive.
I paid a dude 25$ last summer to do it. The previous owner of the house I live in now literally never had it cleaned. After the cleaning, two wheelbarrows of creosol were removed. All in all, I consider the peace of mind worth it.
Keep in mind it's a filthy job. Everything and I mean everything will be covered in a thin layer of soot, so try and block as many rooms as you can with wet bedsheets over doorways and wear a respirator. The wife and I were cleaning the house for weeks and still finding soot everywhere.
What the frick are you talking about you fricking moron? Just keep chimneys open when cleaning them and the draft will keep soot and ashes from going everywhere. What the actual frick.
Also to OP, its probably worth doing in case the last owner was one of those twats who run their fireplaces with too little oxygen and end up filling their chimney with soot. Soot is an insulator that stops heat from conducting to the chimney, so you lose more of it to the blue. Also if you happen to heat up the fireplace too much, it can light on fire and that can crack the chimney and cause a fire in a worst case scenario. Usually if a fireplace is properly built and used with enough draft, it wont produce soot and chimney sweeping is kind of a scam. You can do it yourself too, and save a buck. Honestly if its 25 dollars to get a pro to do it its worth it just for the insurance company to not rip their pantyhose. You should keep an eye on the soot levels in your pipes. The fire should not make any smoke after the initial smoke during lighting or after adding wood.
Isn't there something you can put in the fire that breaks up the creosote?
> buildup
You won't have any if you build a rocket mass heater and re-use the existing flu, or get a reburner insert. Either one super heats the firebox to combust the gasses and such, that come off the wood. All you're left with is a small amount of white ash.
Even if you can clean your chimney and remove most of the creosote, the fact that it exists is due to a poor burning fireplace. And most fireboxes are designed only for primary burn. 66% of the fuel is going up as smoke aka air pollution aka unburnt hydrocarbons. They don't get hot enough internally to ignite the gasses, which then travel up your chimney and deposit creosote as they cool.
>Isn't there something you can put in the fire that breaks up the creosote?
Yes. They make those cleaning log things. Don't know what they're called, and i'm not looking it up, i already got like 6 tabs of porn going here in the background.