alarms and glass cleaning

[micaaronfl]

hi all,

someone told me in another topic suggesting i use newspaper and ash to clean the glass of the merrimack and also rutland glass cleaner. anyone have any other suggestions on glass cleaning or equipment u use?

Also should their be any other alarm near the merrimack aside from a smoke detector? carbon monoxide detector? i have one in basement but insert is on the main floor.

 

[Adios Pantalones]

paper towel. water.

 

[branchburner]

Water, newspaper and ash to clean the glass. I have an almost-full bottle of expensive cleaner - useless.

A carbon monoxide detector on same level as insert is good, but not too close to it.

 

[Cate68]

Magic Erasers are wonderful for cleaning glass.

 

[gpcollen1]

Clean the bulk with the newspaper and ash trick and then use the glass cleaner if you want it pretty. The only time I 'clean' the glass is when we are having guests and the wife wants it to look purty...other than that, I don't care. I know how the stove is performing by the stove top temps and when I loaded the wood.

 

[firefighterjake]

Wet newspaper . . . if there is a bunch of gunk I may dip the wet newspaper in the ash to get it clean . . . but usually just a wet newspaper is all I need.

Alarms . . . smoke and CO . . . close, but not too close . . . last I knew they were recommending a CO detector be placed at least 15 feet from any possible CO source . . . a good rule of thumb for smoke detectors as well . . . to reduce the possibility of false alarms.

 

[raybonz]

Mass. requires a CO detector on every floor of a home.. You make the call I installed one in the cellar and 1st and 2nd floor..

Ray

 

[bboulier]

I usually use paper towel, ashes, and water. But, in especially dirty places I sometimes use Ceramabrite.

 

[NH_Wood]

I have a cheap dishwashing sponge - the type with sponge on one side and slightly rougher sponge on the other. I dampen the sponge, use a little ash on the rough side to scrub the tougher deposits (not much now that it's cold and the draft is better) and the other side to wipe the ash off. After the glass is looking good, I use paper towel and glass cleaner to make it shine. I've been give the glass a cleaning every two weeks or so, or sometimes I'll clean if the stove was allowed to cool due to a warm day. Good wood and good draft seem to keep the glass nice and clean for a long time. I do like clean glass - the Mansfield glass give a big view of the fire and when its really clean the view is simply spectacular. Cheers!

 

[fidiro]

This thread is a little old but I thought I would share my experience with cleaning glass.

I've been blessed with pellets that soot my glass up pretty quick, within half a bag it's light gray. By the end of two bags it's dark gray and if I do 4 bags without cleaning it's black with no light showing anywhere. Tried adjusting air in/out no better so I live with it and tried a difference way to facilitate my glass cleaning.

I just actually finished cleaning it after a two bag burn and what I have been doing is vacuuming the door good and use a wet paper towel to remove as much as possible from glass. What I have been doing after the wet paper towel is using stove top cleaner after to polish up glass. This cleaner leaves glass silky smooth and makes cleaning glass much easier next time around.

Today I actually used one baby wipe first and glass cleaned up real quick and left no soot behind. I think that using that stove top cleaner helps by not letting soot stick to glass. Been doing this for the last 1 1/2 months with good results.

Here's a pic with the glass cleaner and a thermometer I got to play with heat output on stove.

EDIT: Just realized I jumped out of the pellet forums and wrote about cleaning a pellet stove glass instead. I also have used the same stove top cleaner in my wood stove but not as much. The wood stove is on 24/7 so it doesn't get cleaned as often as the pellet stove which runs just a few hours per day and off nights.

 

[CountryBoy19]

I know that I'm in the minority here but let me explain why.

The problem I see with using ash is we fall a tree, it lands in dirt. We toss the pieces into the truck, then when we get home we toss them out, they land on dirt. We split them, they land on the dirt. We then stack them on, you guessed it pallets covered in dirt.

Dirt is an abrasive, and no matter how clean you insist the wood is or how hard you try to keep it clean, there will ALWAYS be dirt on the wood. You then burn the wood, the dirt doesn't burn, as a matter of fact it probably gets baked even harder than it was pre-fire. This dirt is left behind in your ashes. Do you really want to dip a paper towel into a substance laced with abrasives then rub it all over your glass? I don't.

I could maybe understand this if fireplace glass cleaner was $20+ for a bottle or something, but it's not. I use the Rutland stuff without any issues or problems and it costs me $6/bottle and that bottle will last me multiple years. At about $1-3/year (depending how often you clean the glass) is it really worth the risk of scratching/scuffing/frosting/fogging over your glass?


IMHO it's not worth it at all. I'll stick with the actual cleaner; it's so cheap that I truly don't understand the reluctance of some to use it. But to each their own.

 

[fidiro]

I'm willing to bet that rutland glass cleaner is the same stuff or made the same as Weiman that I'm using for my glass stove cooktop. Never heard of the rutland till now but I've been using mine on my stove top glass for the last 11 years and started using it on my pellet stove end of last year. I think what I paid for that bottle about 2 years ago was $6 and it's a 15 ounce bottle. It lasts a long time as a little goes a long way on cold glass.

I would agree that there is sand in the ash and it may or will scratch glass in time and that is the reason I vacuum around glass good before wiping with wet towel.