And this is what I saw, the good, the bad, and the messy...
The Good:
The sides of the heat exchanger were covered with a light coat of ash, not bad for running since April. The tubes, clean, yes the auto cleaning must be working, no ash build up at all. The top of the exchanger and the combustion chamber cover all had a light coat of ash on the top 2-4mm.
The Messy:
The flame tube (where fresh air is introduced to get a second burn of the gasses) had some really gnarly build up. Only on about 1/4 of the diameter, serious ash build up, 15+mm mostly down near where the air is injected, none of the holes where obstructed.
A quick scrape down with the provided tool made all clean again. I did note when cleaning the combustion chamber cover that there are 3 screws that seem to control the gap where it contacts the exchanger. Two were set out so only about 3mm protruded the last was down, about 10mm. The side that had the gap corresponds to the area with the ash buildup. I set the last one up to match the others and will see what that yields.
So the bad:
My bad.. in my hast to clean/reassemble (a process that took all of maybe 15-20min) I neglected to take any pictures.
Hence the wordy descriptions. Next time I will bring my camera so I can show what I'm talking about, hopefully my descriptions/terminology are sufficient to get the idea across.
The Good:
The sides of the heat exchanger were covered with a light coat of ash, not bad for running since April. The tubes, clean, yes the auto cleaning must be working, no ash build up at all. The top of the exchanger and the combustion chamber cover all had a light coat of ash on the top 2-4mm.
The Messy:
The flame tube (where fresh air is introduced to get a second burn of the gasses) had some really gnarly build up. Only on about 1/4 of the diameter, serious ash build up, 15+mm mostly down near where the air is injected, none of the holes where obstructed.
A quick scrape down with the provided tool made all clean again. I did note when cleaning the combustion chamber cover that there are 3 screws that seem to control the gap where it contacts the exchanger. Two were set out so only about 3mm protruded the last was down, about 10mm. The side that had the gap corresponds to the area with the ash buildup. I set the last one up to match the others and will see what that yields.
So the bad:
My bad.. in my hast to clean/reassemble (a process that took all of maybe 15-20min) I neglected to take any pictures.
Hence the wordy descriptions. Next time I will bring my camera so I can show what I'm talking about, hopefully my descriptions/terminology are sufficient to get the idea across.
