I want to clean my own chimney and I have never owned a house with one. Now I do and winter is coming. I want to know that it is done right and will be safe. I took a short video using my phone. I can see daylight about 20-25 feet I am guessing. The inside appears to be round and without obstructions. I just want some opinions on this subject. I called a chimney sweep and he is booking out to Oct. 2017. I don't want to wait that long to pay who knows how much if I can do it myself. Any ideas home improvers???
Wood – What should inside of a brick chimney look like
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Assuming open flame heaters are allowed in a garage in your area, carefully check all clearance requirements for the stove and flue. I would encourage you to adapt to triple wall insulated flue pipe at the ceiling of the first floor and stay with insulated pipe the rest of the way. Do not attempt to change back to single wall pipe.
You may want to install a couple of floor registers to help take some of the warm air from the first floor to the second floor. Remember, heat rises, and depending on how long you run the stove, the heat will eventually fill the second floor. Some simple electric fans can also be placed strategically to move the warm air around and even out the temp in the building.
The first thing to check is. Do you have a backflow preventing Cowl on the Chimney. These are quite effective in preventing backflow into your chimney.
But the real problem is that you are getting a high pressure against your second story wall which is butting against your chimney pipe. Its a natural progression that the wind buffeting the wall will want to flow down the chimney. Besides the chimney extension to a point outside of the high pressure zones created by the building structure. you could possibly put an elbow on the current chimney to move as far away from the wall as possible.
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The chimney should be uniform no chunks missing. Cleaning with a brush is not difficult but if it has not been inspected by someone that knows what to look for you can be taking risks. My current home passed inspection when I purchased it and the chimney was not lined with fire brick just flat field rock cemented together. Needless to say it was a huge fire risk and I have removed it. If you need to use it prior to a proper inspection get a chimney brush and extension poles open the damper and close off the opening with a tight fitting card board or something to prevent the falling debris to cover the inside of your home. scrub the soot and cresode use a high quality flashlight and look for missing chunks. Now the fun part cleaning the debris off the top of the damper. We used industrial vacuums with hepa filters to suck up the soot and cresode if you just have a shop vac you might try to find some better filters for it or have it outside the home because the fine soot will make a huge mess with a standard filter. Once the soot and chunks of cresode are cleaned up make sure the damper will close and open with several cycles (occasionally chunks will get stuck and prevent the damper from operating correctly). Same process for a wood burning stove inserts but there should be a pipe (much easier to clean and inspect) make sure to get the correct size brush for a stove and the job can be done in a few minutes once the cap is pulled.