I've been burning wood as my only source of heat, at my current location for over thirty years. I burn lodgepole pine and Larch. I burn small, hot fires and do not let the stove smolder. I have swept the chimney zero times in thirty years. Last year, I was re-doing my roof and pulled the cap off and shone a flashlight down the chimney. It is absolutely clean. In the last couple of years, I have started doing some back-up heating with a pellet stove (for when we are gone for a couple of days. The pellet stove exhausts directly into the firebox of the wood stove and uses the same chimney. Works great. GD
