Putting Off the Hardest Chore

We’re all, quite literally, breathing easier around the cabin today. Yesterday, we faced up to our responsibilities, and got to work. By noon, we had swept the chimney, and cleaned up both the woodstove and the water heater.

We’ve had a year of intermittent smoke problems with our heating system. I’d forgotten that I addressed this here back in January (see Solving Our Smoking Problem). We thought that solved things, but it didn’t.

Keeping our smoke-ways clean and unobstructed may be the single most important task on the homestead. But, as I readily admit, it’s a hard, unpleasant task (See Sweeping the Wood Stove Chimney) one that’s easily ignored or put off. As a corollary to that, it’s even harder and more unpleasant in winter.

Before we started, Michelle stuck her phone in the T and took a couple of photos. This one shows the view from below looking up… (Photo: MIchelle L. Zeiger).

I don’t know for sure, but we may have gone two years (again) without sweeping the chimney! The half-measures we took in the meantime made me feel like we’d done the job, when in fact, we hadn’t. Last winter, we focused on getting the chimney cap to pivot in the wind. We suffered through the summer, trying to eke out showers from our increasingly uncooperative water heater, before finding a brush (for cleaning pellet stove flues, as it happens) that fit the tubes of the “Iron Giant”, clearing the clogging creosote from those.

Shortly after we solved that issue, we found that our woodstove leaked smoke consistently and badly. We came up with all kinds of theories, eventually facing facts: we needed to sweep the chimney. That meant climbing the snowy roof! I swept and chipped away as much ice and snow as I could, set my safety line, and hauled myself up the metal roof, made even more treacherous by wetness, residual ice and snow, and a slick scum that grows on the metal. It was frightening, strenuous, and quite painful. Yet, working together with Michelle and Aly as “ground crew,” we accomplished the task.

We burn creosote logs periodically, and I tend to hope that they solve the creosote problems. I now realize that, even though the creosote log did its job, that doesn’t mean I did mine. The log chemically changes the creosote from a shiny, flammable substance to fluffy, mostly inert ash. Some of this will fall out of the chimney, but the majority stays, and restricts the flow of smoke through the pipe, drastically reducing the draw.

I know this, I’ve learned the lesson before, but it obviously hasn’t sunk in; denial and procrastination are strong forces in my life!

…and looking down. We have no “after” photos! We needed to button it up and get a fire started to warm the cabin! (Photo: Michelle L. Zeiger.)

But, perhaps this time is different. We’re talking about sweeping twice a year, whether we need it or not, and connecting the timing to switching between water sources. We’re even trying to work out a way to tie in some sort of celebratory meal that doesn’t add meal prep to the day’s chores.

It will all come together if we manage to figure out how to get pizza delivered out here . . . .