Cleaning Harman heat exchanger

  • Active since 1995, Hearth.com is THE place on the internet for free information and advice about wood stoves, pellet stoves and other energy saving equipment.

    We strive to provide opinions, articles, discussions and history related to Hearth Products and in a more general sense, energy issues.

    We promote the EFFICIENT, RESPONSIBLE, CLEAN and SAFE use of all fuels, whether renewable or fossil.
Status
Not open for further replies.

76brian

Feeling the Heat
Nov 5, 2011
394
Ottawa, Canada
gplus.to
I'm curious what all you Harman folks use to clean the accordion style heat exchangers in your harmans? The tool they give you is such a pain in the ass to use. There has to be a better way. I can go a month without cleaning the stove but I find I have to give the accordion surface a cleaning once a week or so to keep the heat output decent, otherwise it burns too many pellets to keep up with the room temp.

I've been using a wire brush because a paint brush really isn't stiff enough to do a good job, but the shape of any normal wire brush really doesn't fit in the grooves right, so it takes some work to get at all the angles.

I'd like to find a cone shaped brush of the right size.. something like the attached pic... but wire bristles with a stiff handle, possibly able to be attached to a drill. Haven't been able to find one yet.

150_bong-brush4.jpg


Just wondering what everyone else does?
 
I was thinking about getting a brush that I can attach to my cordless drill. Something like a dishwashing brush that has a wire handle - a lot like the one you picture above, only it wouldn't be cone shaped of course.

Meguiars makes some wheel polishing foam pads that attach to your cordless drill - and some of those are cone shaped. I bet they would probably work okay, though I don't know how they would hold up when cleaning a pellet stove versus cleaning a relatively flat, smooth wheel surface.
 
I use an old stiff paintbrush for all of my Harman cleaning - works better than anything else I've tried, get's all of the ash off, doesn't scrape the metal, and gets into all of the nook & crannies. I find the tool useless for the accordion-like baffles, and only use it to scrape my burn pot.
 
movemaine said:
I use an old stiff paintbrush for all of my Harman cleaning - works better than anything else I've tried, get's all of the ash off, doesn't scrape the metal

It must be very stiff. I haven't seen a paint brush that's stiff enough to get all the buildup off mine. It will get the loose stuff off, but it's not all loose, it seems to get caked on. Paint brush works on the rest of the stove no problem, but up there it doesn't do a good enough job.

Not sure why you'd be worried about scraping the metal... the cleaner the heat exchanger is the more efficient it's going to be at transferring heat to the room.

Maybe I'm just being too picky about how clean it is, I dunno.
 
76brian said:
movemaine said:
I use an old stiff paintbrush for all of my Harman cleaning - works better than anything else I've tried, get's all of the ash off, doesn't scrape the metal

It must be very stiff. I haven't seen a paint brush that's stiff enough to get all the buildup off mine. It will get the loose stuff off, but it's not all loose, it seems to get caked on. Paint brush works on the rest of the stove no problem, but up there it doesn't do a good enough job.

Not sure why you'd be worried about scraping the metal... the cleaner the heat exchanger is the more efficient it's going to be at transferring heat to the room.

Maybe I'm just being too picky about how clean it is, I dunno.

I clean mine once a week, and don't get a lot of other buildup other than fine ash. The paintbrush gets 99% of it (there's always going to be some discoloration)
 
I use the Harman tool, & a stiff bristle automotive parts cleaning brush.
The Harman tool is good for the very front & back areas of the accordion
- where it meets the vertical walls & the stiff-bristle parts brush really gets
the entire accordion clean. The actual shape of the bristles is almost triangular,
so I find it's indispensable for my Harman maintenance...YMMV
 
The toool that comes with the stove will do a good job on the burn pot .
I use a long handled paint brush to clean the heat exchanger in my Harman Advance I never needed anything more abrasive than that.
Jim
 
Depends on the pellets. Good, clean burning pellets and I use an old paintbrush as all I have is light ash. Dirtier pellets that leave behind hard buildup and I have to get in there with an abrasive pad and scrub away; and I come out pretty sooted up myself.

This year, I opted to just stay with better pellets. A few dollars more, but cleaning is easy piezy.
 
When I burned crappy pellets I used a copper cleaning pad, Chore Boy I think, once in awhile. With good pellets, I just use a paintbrush and it gets 90% of the stuff off.
 
Paint brush works great for me....
 
I also have some old vacuum attachments that I use with my shop vac - an crevice extender attachment, and a stiff upholstery attachment - both of which are helpful.

I will say that I use the paintbrush on everything, and it gets most everything, but there is a fine film of harder stuff on some surfaces. Probably at year end cleaning, I'll use a wire brush to get that off.
 
I use a walll paper paste brush. Cheap, works well and covers a lot of area at once. similar to this one here
 

Attachments

  • paste brush.jpg
    paste brush.jpg
    8.7 KB · Views: 437
Status
Not open for further replies.