Quadrafire Mt Vernon Non AE I Had a problem...

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Baston8005

Member
Oct 17, 2007
124
East of Hartford, CT
Got home yesterday to find that the cleaning rod on the left side of my stove wouldn't move. Argghhhhh Made a quick decision to tear down the stove and clean it again. I last took it apart about a month ago. Took about 10 minutes to assembly tools and take apart the stove. Spent the next 20 minutes cleaning the tubes. Then spent the next 30 minutes trying to figure why the cleaning rod was not moving cleanly up and down the tube. Bent tube, burr.......I Whacked the cleaning rod a few times with a hammer LOL. After a few choice words I noticed the long rod had an ever so slight bend to it. Bent it back and bingo. All was good again in my world. Put the stove back together in about 10 minutes and fired it up. Crisis diverted
 
How often are you using the cleaner rod? What does Quadrafire recommend?

I can understand why the rod was bent after being hit by a hammer.....I don't think that's the recommended method.

Sounds like you just need to use the cleaning rod more often, and don't let deposits build-up too much.
 
It had a slight bend to it before I tapped it with the hammer LOL. The bend was just enough so that when pulling it out, it would get caught on the tube and hang up. I use the rods every time I clean out the stove. They say not to use it while the stove is running.
 
Baston8005 said:
They say not to use it while the stove is running.
My Astoria owners manual said to run the tube scraper up and down at least once a day, even when the stove was burning....even provided a small handle to hook into a hole on the rod so you wouldn't burn your hand.

Wonder why Quad says you can't? They expect people to shut their stoves off in the winter to run the cleaner rod?? Weird......
 
Metal expands when it's hot. That's why the cleaning rod is tight. It's a very close tolerance. Wait for it to cool down and it should be fine. The guy I bought my Mt. Vernon from said he tried using the cleaning rod while it was running and the rod wouldn't move.
 
Over firing will bend the tubes.
 
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