Am I that weak, or is Harman scraper bad?

Mattman193 said:

GVA said:

Mattman193 said:

My dealer gave me this big carbide scraper and told me to really get in there and scrape the burn pot weekly with it. He said the Harman tool is fine for light cleaning and getting into hard to reach places like the auger tube. Other than those two tools, I have a screwdriver and a paint brush.

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If that is truely carbide I would hesitate to use it on the mild steel burnpot.

A screwdriver bent works fine but even this is harder than the burnpot.
the idea is to have it sharp enough to get the edge under the clinkers and they pop right up.

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Yes, it is carbide but you have to use your judgment when you use it- it doesn't mar the metal when you scrape with it. I'm sure you can do way more damage going after the carbon with a chisel and a hammer. I really don't get that much build up on the burn pot since I stopped burning Marth pellets. Once weekly I shut the stove down and vacuum it out and scrape the burn pot- most of the carbon is right in the front of the pot. At most it takes me 30 minutes to scrape the pot and pull the removable panels to clean the heat exchanger and exhaust fan.

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30 minutes to scrape the burn pot?
It`s not so much the hardness of the scraping tool but the adhesion of the carbon buildup that presents the problem. A screw driver puts more pressure on a smaller area than the Harman tool and therefore makes it easier to remove.
I`ve not heard of any tool marring the burnpots, even judicious use of a hammer and chisel. I mean who`s gonna use a 3lb hammer to loosen a bit of clinker?

I have a tool like this to clean the ridge around the auger tube. similar to o ring tool but larger.
http://www.matcotools.com/Catalog/toolcatalog.jsp?cattype=T&cat=2315&page=4

This is the best tool yet for the stubborn clinkers.
http://www.pbase.com/johnd1/image/106790574.jpg

Gio said:

Mattman193 said:

GVA said:

Mattman193 said:

My dealer gave me this big carbide scraper and told me to really get in there and scrape the burn pot weekly with it. He said the Harman tool is fine for light cleaning and getting into hard to reach places like the auger tube. Other than those two tools, I have a screwdriver and a paint brush.

Click to expand...

If that is truely carbide I would hesitate to use it on the mild steel burnpot.

A screwdriver bent works fine but even this is harder than the burnpot.
the idea is to have it sharp enough to get the edge under the clinkers and they pop right up.

Click to expand...

Yes, it is carbide but you have to use your judgment when you use it- it doesn't mar the metal when you scrape with it. I'm sure you can do way more damage going after the carbon with a chisel and a hammer. I really don't get that much build up on the burn pot since I stopped burning Marth pellets. Once weekly I shut the stove down and vacuum it out and scrape the burn pot- most of the carbon is right in the front of the pot. At most it takes me 30 minutes to scrape the pot and pull the removable panels to clean the heat exchanger and exhaust fan.

Click to expand...

30 minutes to scrape the burn pot?
It`s not so much the hardness of the scraping tool but the adhesion of the carbon buildup that presents the problem. A screw driver puts more pressure on a smaller area than the Harman tool and therefore makes it easier to remove.
I`ve not heard of any tool marring the burnpots, even judicious use of a hammer and chisel. I mean who`s gonna use a 3lb hammer to loosen a bit of clinker?

Click to expand...

No, not 30 minutes to clean the pot, 30 minutes to clean the stove- read carefully

I have the same stove and pull the lever at least once a day when the stove is in the down cycle. I have never had to use a metal object of any sort to clean my burn pot. I Vac the pot once every two days and it keeps it clean. I get very little clinkers and can suck them up with the vac from the ash pan. This leads to my question. What type of pellets are you using? Wondering if different pellets are making the difference. BTW, the stove has been great!!

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mralias, I an using Hamer's Hot ones. I can't complain about them at all.

Perhaps our differing results are due to me forgetting to pull the cleaning lever for a few days at a time. My memory never was much good and on top of that it ain't what it used to be... :red:

I found that the Harman scraper was only suited for scraping the heat exchanger tubes. It was useless for the burn pot. I took a big pry bar from the garage and use that for scraping the burn pot.

Gio said:

This is the best tool yet for the stubborn clinkers.
http://www.pbase.com/johnd1/image/106790574.jpg

Click to expand...

Gio
ILMAO. Personally I think you deserve some kind of an award from the Webmaster for this posting. Thanks for the good laugh.

Hey don't laugh you guys, I'll bet if a jackhammer could
fit inside a stove then some jackass would use one in there.

zeta said:

Hey don't laugh you guys, I'll bet if a jackhammer could
fit inside a stove then some jackass would use one in there.

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Let's not be judgmental. we're here to educate, and be educated, and to have little fun.

itworks said:

Let's not be judgmental. we're here to educate, and be educated, and to have little fun.

Click to expand...

Heh? LMAO.

zeta said:

itworks said:

Let's not be judgmental. we're here to educate, and be educated, and to have little fun.

Click to expand...

Heh? LMAO.

Click to expand...

It's ok Zeta they're still new....... ;-P

zeta said:

Hey don't laugh you guys, I'll bet if a jackhammer could
fit inside a stove then some jackass would use one in there.

Click to expand...

Are you saying I shouldn't ahve used this to clean my burnpot?

I am a newbie. Bought our first pellet stove. It is a Winfield (owned by Lennox now). Great stove when it is clean. We have only burned 22 bags of pellets this season. This last week got pretty cold and it could not keep up. I have cleaned the burn pot out every 4-5 bags of pellets. But after the cold spell, I am having to clean it every bag, sometimes twice between bags. The burn pot is cast iron. It seems to me the roughness of the cast iron contributes the the ash build up, thus causing more "clinging" to take place, which eventually contributes to clingers forming. I have noticed a lot of stoves with stainless steel burn pots and was wondering if the
"smooth surface" reduces the amount of clingers. Any comments out there about your burn pot build? If the stainless steel pots have less build or clingers, then could it be due to the this? And if so, then would a "polish" (by taking a grinder and polishing stones to work the sides of the pot - similar to what is done to cylinder heads - otherwise known as ported and polished to increase the air flow) job on this pot reduce the amount of clingers?

Also, I am wondering if a good "oven cleaning" cycle would burn off all of the clingers. I was thinking about putting it on the cook grill (gas) on high for ten minutes or so. I know that the cooling it would be critical to not crack it. Just a thought at this time.....

I don't think the pot composition will have much to do with the formation of clinkers. (Although clingers describes them well also). The clinkers are deposits in the ash melting and fusing together. Make sure you have an efficient fuel/air burn ratio when burning and try different brands of pellets.

Take a look at this thread for more pot scraper ideas. https://www.hearth.com/econtent/index.php/forums/viewthread/31883/#350301.

Could you post a picture of the pea sized area of your burn pot? I may have had a similar condition in my burn pot. The dealer tech agreed it was a defective burn pot and will replace it under warranty.

Here's what the pea sized defect in my burn pot looked like. When it first appeared it looked like carbon build up but I could not scrape it off. As it grew it turned out to be the the burn pot warping.



Harmon PF100 pellet furnace

This is what I use, tickle them out.

I got one of my old jumbo sized screw drivers and ground the tip to a chisel point. I use this once a week or so to give the pot a good scraping.

I'm not sure about the Harman stoves, but I just pull the burn pot out of my Enviro and use a wire wheel brush on my drill. Cleans it perfectly.

CygnusX1 said:

I'm not sure about the Harman stoves, but I just pull the burn pot out of my Enviro and use a wire wheel brush on my drill. Cleans it perfectly.

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I`ll let you in on a little secret. With a Harman you don`t need to pull the burn pot . You don`t even have to shut the stove off to scrape it.

Oh God!! I just realized this is an old thread. who dug it up?