Heated debate at the shop: nylon brushes vs steel wire for heavy creosote. Went with nylon and kinda wish I hadn't.

2 comments

2 Comments

Totally feel your pain on this one. Actually had a buddy who swore by those plastic brushes for everything, even after I warned him about heavy creosote. He went ahead and used one on a clogged up flue from a wood stove that hadn't been cleaned in three years. Ended up having to take the whole pipe apart because the nylon just pushed the creosote around and made it worse. We spent a whole Sunday scraping out chunks by hand with a putty knife. Steel wire would have saved us hours, even if we had to be careful not to scratch anything. Now I always tell people to look at the buildup before picking a brush, because guess wrong and you're in for a real mess.

rosek7319d ago

Oh man, "kinda wish I hadn't" is exactly how I felt after trying nylon on a chimney that was REALLY caked on. The issue isn't that nylon is bad, it's that heavy creosote is basically tar and the bristles just sort of slide over it instead of scraping it off. I made the same mistake thinking softer would be safer for the liner, but now I just grab steel wire for the first rough pass and use nylon for final polishing. You might save yourself some frustration by going back over it with steel, just take it easy so you don't gouge the flue.