Creosote Reducing Powder Looks Like Borax

The product that is sold to spread on a wood fire to render harmless the creosote in the boiler and chimney looks suspiciously like Borax hand soap. Does anybody know what it is and will a less expensive product do the same thing?

The stuff I stock in my store says Trisodium-phosphate and sodium chloride. Tsp is a heavy duty detergent and sodium chloride is of course salt. I sell a lot of it but still recommend giving the chimney a through brushing

Steve

I wonder what the ratio is? Looks like alot of TSP.

Look at the manufactures material safety data sheet (MSDS). It will give you the exact composition except for trade secret ingredients. It there are trade secret exclusions you can sometimes still get those ingredients from a poison information agency.

Would an MSDS sheet be available online or must it be requested in writing from a company?

Manufactures web sites frequently have the MSDS posted. Any industrial user of the product is also required to have it. Also try the Fire Marshal. The key info to have is the manufactures exact name for the product, not the slick marketing trade mark but what they called it when they authored the MSDS.

Here is the one that I stock, actually has more than just TSP and salt

Steve

I'll mix some TSP and salt 50/50 and see what happens. I wonder if it's the real TSP which was banned about 20 years ago, or if it's the stuff called tsp in the hardware store.

I used TSP regularly when I had the wood-burner where the Harman is now. It's purpose is to dry out the creosote in the chimney and enable it to flake off easily when you run the brush down.
I'm glad I'm done with that. I still have one wood-burner, but with the SS liner in the flue creosote build-up is minimal, it actually flakes off by itself and falls down the liner into the stove. I run the brush down about once a year, as opposed to once a month with the wood stove connected to the other chimney, still managed to light the chimney up 3 times in 16 years. A kick-ass chimney fire is a great way to get all that creosote out (as long as it doesn't spread to the structure or destroy the liner). That kind of excitement I can do without. The FD here is good at saving foundations.

MSDSs can be found here.

http://www.inchem.org/

If you want to know more about the chemicals you are going to be playing with, you can type the name of the compound into the search engine, you will learn all about it. You would be amazed at how much MEK is in a piece of cheddar cheese.

Thanks for the info. I put the MSDS site in my favorites.

I can say from experience that the stuff doesn't really work that good. We started with a clean chimney, used that stuff, and still had a chimney fire. No damage except maybe to my heart. From my experience, and we burned dry hardwood only, it actually increases the risk of as chimney fire. If we never used the "creosote remover" then we would have cleaned the chimney twice during the season, but because we assumed that there wasn't a buildup we figured that once a year would be sufficient. A chimney fire is scary *censored* with a central chimney, it can burn the house down very easy. So if you still have to clean the chimney anyway why waste your money on creosote remover?

Last summer I broke out the clay liner of my central chimney so I could install a 316 Stainless solid pipe with 1/2" of ceramic wool wrapped around the perimeter and covered with aluminum foil. It's supposed to be the best system and also UL approved The liner wouldn't be harmed by a fire, except maybe for a heart attack by its owner.

I haven't looked in the chimney, but I'm curious to see how it's doing.

e.alleg wrote:I can say from experience that the stuff doesn't really work that good.

I have to agree with e.alleg, though I sell the stuff, and I sell quite a lot, I don't recommend it. You have to add it to the fire regularly and at $7.50 a tub it is expensive. I have customers that swear by it but I suspect that they are the people that are burning hot fires with well seasoned wood. A choked down smoking wood stove venting into a cold chimney is going to build cresote. If you are going to burn wood, the only safe thing to do is regular cleaning and having a couple of Chimflex fire extinguishing sticks on hand just in case.

Steve

I have tried it a few times and found it to be pretty much useless.