heat reclaimer

Just finished burning wood for five months and got excellent heat from heat reclaimer on six inch exhaust. However when i took exhaust apart to inspect and clean I found a large amount of creosote above reclaimer that was blocking exhaust on start-up.Are there any fixes for this problem other than dismantle and clean the exhaust during the heating season ?

Yup, burn some anthracite. No creosote ever.

Seriously taking the heat out of the chimney with the heat exchanger is probably where most of the creosote is coming from.

These heat reclaimers are quite dangerous things indeed. They sap out heat from the exhaust thus causing a large increase in the amount of creosote formation as you have discovered. My advise to you is to get rid of it. Get rid of it now before you cause a chimney fire and burn down your house at the worse or end up causing the flue to clog up and you smoke yourselves out of the house. The little bit of extra heat you think you are getting from this thing is not worth the danger to yourself and your family.

Better yet find out how much better coal is as a fuel than wood.

I put a heat reclaimer on my wood boiler in early Dec. I did this as I was installing brand new 8" black pipe. From Dec. 7 thru the end of Jan. I burned wood not stop...oil boiler didn't come on once..suddenly, at the end of Jan. when there was 2 feet of snow on the roof, I had no draft to speak of..I could not burn wood, and I even have a draft inducer...
It turns out that the reclaimer kept my flue so cool, that in just over 5 weeks of burning, so much creosote bult up that it actually plugged up and blocked the spart arrester that is atop the flue, just before the cap...
Love the concept of it, but unless you are in a situation where you are only going to use your stove periodically where you maintain a continuos strong, hot burn, don't use one

I've got this crazy feeling that this is a Coal Board. Coal,like wood,is a tool of heat generation product. The same goes for the stoves used to burn the product. Draft is an interesting animal. So is creosote. Or flyash,for that matter. If you constrict flow on your draft(other than a barometric damper) in your chimney,you're inviting one hell of dilemma. Even though you come here as a woodburner,we'll always advise you to burn safely. Then we'll advise you to swear-off the evils of creosote and join us in a heating season centered around Anthracite or Bituminous Coal...Carpenter Ants and Termites hate it. Anthracite can sit and store safely without worry of spontaneous combustion indoors. Try it,or get around someone who currently does. Study up here and enjoy a little bit better heat...Take Care and please correct your flue

If you're running any kind of coal and you have a chimney that drafts well I'd absolutely recommend one, grab any extra heat you can, but, with wood, they're known to cool the flue gasses too much and create exactly the problem you mentioned.

Berlin wrote:If you're running any kind of coal and you have a chimney that drafts well I'd absolutely recommend one, grab any extra heat you can, but, with wood, they're known to cool the flue gasses too much and create exactly the problem you mentioned.

The only downside to pulling heat from a coal stove's stack is that typically the stack temps are already low and you don't have as much heat to work with.
However - using one wont cause creosote - so if you already have bought the gadget and your flu had lots of draft - try it - but you may be disappointed in how much heat it produces.