Chimney Relining & Liner Repair in Show Low, AZ

Pellet Appliances Are Not Just Smaller, They Are Chemically Different

Show Low runs more pellet appliances than anywhere else we work, and pellet relining gets treated as the easy version of the wood job because the pipe is smaller. It is not the easy version. It is a different specification, and getting it wrong shows up in three or four years rather than immediately.

Wood exhaust is hot and comparatively dry. Pellet exhaust leaves the appliance far cooler, because a pellet stove extracts much more of the heat before the gas reaches the vent - that is the whole point of the design. Cooler exhaust means the moisture in it condenses inside the vent instead of leaving the top as vapour. And pellet condensate is mildly acidic.

Acid sitting on the inside of a thin stainless wall does what acid does. We have pulled vents with pinholes through them at four years old, and in every case the liner that went in was ordinary 304 stainless or, worse, single-wall stove pipe pressed into service as a liner because it was on the shelf.

What Goes In Instead

For a pellet appliance venting inside an existing masonry flue, the liner wants to be 316-grade stainless at minimum, sized to the appliance collar rather than to whatever is convenient, and run continuously to the termination with a proper tee and clean-out at the base. The clean-out matters more on pellet than on wood, because fly ash accumulates at the bottom of a vertical run and nobody can reach it without one.

The other half is slope. Pellet vents that run horizontally through a wall before turning up need a rise, not a fall, so condensate drains back toward the appliance rather than pooling in a low spot and sitting there between burns. A surprising number of the installs we open have the pipe dead level or running slightly downhill, which concentrates exactly the liquid we are trying to avoid.

The Cheapest Version of This Job

If the appliance is going into a masonry chimney that is otherwise sound, the pellet reline is the least expensive lining work we do - the diameter is small and the material cost is a fraction of a 6-inch insulated wood liner. It is worth doing at the same visit as a stove service, because the appliance has to come out from the fireplace either way and that is most of the labour.

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