Stove Pipes

Greetings everyone. I have just spent the last 5 hours removing, cleaning and replacing the stove pipes for the cook stove and the furnace. A filthy dirty job if there ever was one. I look like a chimney sweep which, in essence I am. The furnace pipes came down first, I then took them outside to clean. Since we are living as close to 1865 as possible, cleaning the pipes means NO CHEMICALS!!!! This meant I had to come up with a period method of cleaning. I built a small fire and set the pipes on it one at a time. The creosote built up inside the pipes gradually heated up and then (as I secretly hoped) burst into flame! This melted the creosote and burnt it off as well, leaving an easily removed ash.

Took about an hour to do this and the pipes are remarkably clean. So much so that I noticed one of the elbows will need replacing beause it is full of small holes. The furnace pipes have been re-assembled and the furnace lit and it is drawing quite nicely thank you.

I must also mention I cleaned a good deal of ash from the furnace fire box. We want to make soap early in 1866 (2012) so this ash will become lye water, one of the ingredients of soap the other being animal fat.

The cook stove also got a good cleaning, pipes and all. I took the top off the stove, remove the pipes for cleaning and set about removing creosote and accumulated ash. The pipes were not as caked up with creosote as the furnace pipes so I simply wacked them on the outside with a stick, shook out the loose creosote and soot and re-assembled them to the stove. Inside the stove there was quite an accumulation of ash and soot, all of which had to be removed mechanically with a brush and scrapper. That being done, the top of the stove was cleaned up and re-assembled. I have yet to build a fire in the stove but it should draw much better now.

Margaret has a book which contains excerpts and quotations from letters written durintg the Victorian Age in Upper Canada. There is mention of cleaning stove pipes which apparently was a job which made folks testy to say the least and was dirty to boot! It would seem that my foray into pipe cleaning was a simple little re-enactment of a dirty Victorian task in Upper Canada.

It may seem an obvious thing but good dry wood is a must if you want to keep the build up of creosote and soot to a minimum. I have been guilty of leaving our wood out and partially uncovered. In a normal winter this would not be such a problem. However, this year has proven to be a wet one to say the least and it has continued to be so right up to the present time. So bad me, we have some wet wood to deal with and I'll be cleaning pipes again in a month or so most likely.  My penance I guess. (Insert dramatic sigh!) :-)

That's all for now, talk to you soon.

Ken