Black Pipe Rusted Again

Getting the Hitzer ready for the season and sure enough the black pipe is rusted. I have had to replace the pipe every year because of this. I have tried keeping it hooked up, have tried taking it apart and storing it in the shed, etc. I thought I cleaned the pipe well when the last heating season was over. Can humidity be my culprit?

Is there anything I can do or try, that anyone has had success with, so that I don't have to buy new pipe every year? I read somewhere about taking pipe apart, cleaning it well, stuffing newspaper in the pipe and then wrapping up the pipe in newspaper. But, haven't tried that yet.

Any suggestions are greatly appreciated.

Thanks,
JohnnyV

I'll start out by saying that I am new to coal and am just relaying what the stove dealer told me to do to combat the rust and acid effects. That is to make a baking soda and water solution at the end of the season and wash out the pipe with it. The baking soda will neutralize the acid erosion. Sounds good in theory, can't say if it works.

My suggestion for you sir is to do the same thing that I have to do.. Replace the pipe with a new one. Unless you like the smell of Bit smoke in your house!!!

I found out the expensive way that at the end of the heating season, I need to have my chimney ash door open for a top to bottom ventilation otherwise condensation builds up contributing to the rusting. This problem has led to the ash pit becoming a sloppy pit of sulfuric acid sludge. When it rained, the problem was compounded by water building on top of the sludge and eating away the aluminum ash door frame. I'll have to post some pictures to show how bad this got. Hope this helps and look forward to others commenting.

I have had good luck by taking them apart and cleaning them good then painting the inside with rustolum stuff with newspaper and storing them by the stove. This will be the third year for them.

Well, as many times, I'm completly on the opposite side. Closed spaces are the best places to get humidity happy. And it's very hard if possible to avoid humidity to get inside of parts sealed the ways we read here. Do some searches on how to get rid of humidity in an air tight house. Ventilation/air circulation naturally or mechanically is the way to go. Take a non-air tight built house and make it air tight (as much as possible cause 100% air tight is impossible to reach) and if you have no special ventilation, then you have humidity problems...
Have the draft system (stove pipe, chimney...) cleaned at the end of the season, have a good wood fire, you know the ones making as much black soot as possible to coat the parts with that no- acid deposit. Then have a light bulb in the stove to get a little heat so a natural draft is always drying all parts. For shure, absolutly NO rain should enter the system, a rain cap is more than a must. If you'r scare about pulling out too much humidity from that, then the problem is not only in the stove. If too much humidity is present in the house, seal the parts as you want, the problem will be there anyway.
One of these days, we will have to find a real universal and easy to use solution, it could be a sort of ""air fume"" placed in the stove, like in the ash pit... producing a basic (PH +) vapor/fume/gase or oily fume...to protect the parts.

I do the same as Pierre and always finish off the year in the spring with a wood fire or two. They are opposites, wood smoke and ant coal exhaust as far as acid and base. My cookstove has the same collar pipe for the past 10 years on it. That's the one that goes from oval to round off the back of the stove. When I burned wood and needed to clean the creosote out from the cookstove, I would always burn some lumps of stove coal in the night before. It always loosened up the creosote. Now it's the opposite with a wood fire at the end of the season.
Besides that, if you remove the pipes, cap off the flue, then put a baking soda solution through the pipes then pack with newspaper for the summer you should be ok. I bough some spray stuff called fluid film. I don't know if it works but am trying it this year on my mower deck and chainsaw, hegde trimmer blades, etc..Might try it on the pipes next summer if it does well on the tools.

I would try just tapping all the ash out, dryer vent brush, maybe compressed air. No water. Spray oil and then keep in dry storage.

my spring time maint. is as follows.
pull the exhaust pipe, cap the through wall , brush the innards of the stove with an old paint brush and then vaccum it out everywhere , garden hose the inside of the exhaust pipe and let it dry in the sun then spray the dog crap outta the inside of pipe then the inside of my cylinder and grates of the stove with WD-40 and let her set till fall ....my black pipe exhaust is seein its 4th winter as of todays fire.
Now my shop is dry and and never very damp where my stove is and where I store my exhaust pipe up overhead its like 120 degrees in the summer...may be why this works for me?
Tim

You could spray it with LPS 3 or some other form of rust inhibitor.

I must be lucky. My 8" black pipe Lowes stack has been fine for a couple of years. I do have a cap on the chimney which keeps the rain out, but the stink bugs love to follow the flue down to the baro. Maybe there's a slight draft going up all summer which might help. Also, my anthracite coal is basement coal that might have been mined in the late 50's or sixties. Possibly it has less sulfur content, but I do see pieces that have distinct yellow sulfur content. My stash has a sulfur smell to it, and my coal fire exhaust has a faint odor of sulfur too. I have left the stove unprepared all summer again, and the steel inside seems to be holding up well. I have flaking buildup inside which seems to be surface only. I have been starting my coal fires with wood, don't know if that has anything to do with it. Still have to get everything ready, run the brush down through the flue, take the firebrick out to clean and inspect, etc. My biggest issue is the unavailable cast iron stove grate that has a few braze repairs, but I think I'm good for another season.
Funny thing is, I have a small Sears plow on an old '68 Sears tractor; that I shoved my ash plie into the woods with. I didn't clean the ash off it and stuck it in the shed. The ash has taken the paint off the plow where it was caked on.

I burn ohio bituminous coal I've got a year on my pipe with no rust at all. The pipe it replaced was about 20 and the ss chimney also it about 20 too and just the top section is getting pinholed on the outside.

Is your stove in the basement?

Coal ash & moisture = sulfuric acid.

Smitty are you sure you aren't storing that stuff in salt water?

i gave up on using the black pipe, still gotta change it every year so I just use the cheapest 6" pipe I can get my hands on and tape the joints with metal tape......think it was 8 dollars for a 5' section of galvanized at lowes......mind you I don't have any real chimneys here, just tin strapped to the building, I even took the outside sections down and cleaned them out at the end of the last heating season, but when I went to put them back together today I had to change most of the pipe anyway.

thinking of pricing some sch 40 steel pipe for the outside of the building, that should last a bunch of seasons!