Well, I had the day off today, as I'd worked my a** off all week and had my hours in by the end of the day Thurs. Decided today was a great day to do a FULL cleaning on the stove after 67 bags.....supposed to get pretty cold this weekend and into next week.
Ripped out both blowers, auger motor & auger, emptied & cleaned the hopper, and pulled the firepot w/ stirrer, "firebrick", and ash trap doors and proceeded to give her a complete going over. Removed both fans from the motor shafts and cleaned everything (and found out that they're both held on with T20 torx set screws).
I also finally remembered to rotate the conv. blower motor on the housing so the oil holes were facing up. Ran a drill bit through all the firepot holes, and knocked off some hard burned on ash with a 1" chisel.
One interesting thing was that the comb. blower fan blades had almost no ash build-up at all, and the plenum where the blower sits was almost completely clean....no ash to vacuum up at all!
T-cap was just about 1/2 full, and the pipe was almost like it was last summer after I did the final spring cleaning.....NICE!!
Put everything back together w/ new gasket on the comb. blower, oiled the motors, and dumped in some fresh Lignetics in the hopper.
Well, it was worth it. The dog found her spot in front as soon as I finished cleaning up and fired the stove off.
Ripped out both blowers, auger motor & auger, emptied & cleaned the hopper, and pulled the firepot w/ stirrer, "firebrick", and ash trap doors and proceeded to give her a complete going over. Removed both fans from the motor shafts and cleaned everything (and found out that they're both held on with T20 torx set screws).
I also finally remembered to rotate the conv. blower motor on the housing so the oil holes were facing up. Ran a drill bit through all the firepot holes, and knocked off some hard burned on ash with a 1" chisel.
One interesting thing was that the comb. blower fan blades had almost no ash build-up at all, and the plenum where the blower sits was almost completely clean....no ash to vacuum up at all!
T-cap was just about 1/2 full, and the pipe was almost like it was last summer after I did the final spring cleaning.....NICE!!
Put everything back together w/ new gasket on the comb. blower, oiled the motors, and dumped in some fresh Lignetics in the hopper.
Well, it was worth it. The dog found her spot in front as soon as I finished cleaning up and fired the stove off.
