Getting the dust Bunnies out of the cage.

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Lumber-Jack

Minister of Fire
Hearth Supporter
Dec 29, 2008
2,007
Beautiful British Columbia
One of my hearth maintenance issues I have been doing that I have seldom (never) read about in this forum is that of cleaning the blower fans on the wood stove or insert.
I have read a number of post where people were complaining about the noise that they make, but never read about anybody doing anything about it.
Well I just finished my mid season cleaning of this thing and it made a huge difference in the noise level. It was starting to rattle when the fan was set on high and even the low setting seemed to be quite noisy. After cleaning the noise on the high fan setting is now acceptable and it's hard to tell if it's even running at the low setting. Big improvement :)
On my stove the job takes about 10 minutes, requires removing 2 screw to remove it from the stove and 2 screws to take off the cover plate of the fan box, then I use an air compressor to blow all the dust out of the little squirrel cages and inside the box and that's basically it, except when I put it back together again I use a little silicon on the parts where metal fits against metal. The silicon acts as a sort of rubber gasket to stop any potential rattling noises. Last time I didn't use any silicon where the stove fits on the back of the stove and of course this is where the rattling started.
The dust that builds up inside the squirrel cage fans reduces performance and can build up unevenly causing them to be out of balance and vibrate.

Here is a picture link of how much dust can build up in just a few months.
Dust Bunnies in the cage

Anybody else clean their blowers?
 
Sure do,2x a year.
 
I cleaned mine on my regency, 2 screws and the squirrel cage is exposed. I did the same thing with compressed air. I have a air gun "blow gun" with a 2 foot tip, I just insert it between the back plates and blow it out. Seems to work well on my model and easy enough to do. Don't send the fan in overdrive ! Just small burst .

The dirt will get on the fins and can cause it to be unbalanced, this will take out the bearings and I'm not sure there is a fix at that point. Keep it balanced and running well to get max life out of it ;) Not to much different from car blowers "was a GM dealer tech for 13 years" If you let it run like crap and slow down it pulls extra amps causing the electronics to burn out, and I assume the heat from the stove would sure help with that.
 
Well at least there is 3 of us that clean our air blowers. 3 out of about 19,000 members isn't too bad I guess. ;-)
 
Compressed air & the shop vac(at the same time)....a winning combination! :cheese:

Actually pretty amazing how much better it runs when cleaned................
 
Blowers? I have no stinking blowers!
 
BrowningBAR said:
Blowers? I have no stinking blowers!

If possible I would fix that... Makes a big difference on mine for sure. "I also have one because mine came with it" I'm cheap and blowers are not....lol

Wonder how long I would have went if it didn't ??? World may never know now, great .... Another sleepless night :)
 
Cire3 said:
BrowningBAR said:
Blowers? I have no stinking blowers!

If possible I would fix that... Makes a big difference on mine for sure. "I also have one because mine came with it" I'm cheap and blowers are not....lol

Wonder how long I would have went if it didn't ??? World may never know now, great .... Another sleepless night :)

Actually, the stoves I have do not have blowers available... No blower for the Vigilant or the Intrepid. And, I don't think the Fireview has a blower option. Not sure, though. I do use fans.


And I was referencing the movie 'The Treasure of the Sierra Madre'.

Dobbs: 'If you're the police where are your badges?'
Gold Hat: 'Badges? We ain't got no badges. We don't need no badges! I don't have to show you any stinkin' badges!'[1]
 
routine maintenance, just like the fridge..
 
EKLawton said:
routine maintenance, just like the fridge..
Well that's true, one would think it should be routine maintenance, just like cleaning out the ashes or cleaning the chimney which are talked about all the time in this forum, but I haven't read any other threads in this forum talking about cleaning their blowers and that was the point of the thread.
However I have read a few posts where people have said they don't like to run their fans because they don't like listening to the noise. Perhaps a cleaning might be answer to their noise problem???
My fan is relatively easy to access and clean, but I imagine that's not the case with all the other designs especially insert stoves where the fans are a little more inaccessible.
 
i regularly clean out the blower on the buck so the dust doesn't accumulate .it still makes the same amount of noise after cleaning. Pete
 
Hi there,

This is my first visit to the boards, but I see it will be very helpful!

The fan on our Regency wood fireplace insert (fan model 3100) has been rattling for a long time now on high, and getting worse recently even on low. I thought something was loose, but perhaps it just needs a cleaning. I tried just using pressurized air through the grill holes, but I'm sure I need to actually take it apart to do a good job. However, I can't find how to open it up!! I've even downloaded the user manual from the Regency site, and it doesn't say how to remove it (and no mention of cleaning it, either). Anyone have this model and know how to proceed?

Okay, now off to clean my fridge... thanks for the reminder!!

Wolfie
 
Carbon_Liberator said:
One of my hearth maintenance issues I have been doing that I have seldom (never) read about in this forum is that of cleaning the blower fans on the wood stove or insert.
and can build up unevenly causing them to be out of balance and vibrate.

Here is a picture link of how much dust can build up in just a few months.
Dust Bunnies in the cage

Anybody else clean their blowers?

I am very please with my Harman Advance.

I bought it used 6-years old & works great!

Noticed the blower was not too forcefull & one of the ports did not have much air coming out.

I have a compressor & turned it up to 140lbs of air & blew the baffles out from front to back.
Then the blower fins & blew up iar duct towards baffles/front.
Did this back & forth few times.

You would not believe the herd of dust/hair balls that came out!
Stove heats great!
 
Just brought mine out in the driveway last sunday and blew it out. Didn't think i needed to til I took it out and took a look. Wow was mine dirty.
 
mellow said:
I clean the ash buildup out of my blowers as well, just as others have mentioned, compressed air 2x a year.

Anyone know of a product we could spray on the fan blades that would resist hair and other stuff from sticking to it?
I've never heard of anything like that that stops dust from sticking to fans. If someone could come up with a product like that, that works, they would make a killing in the computer industry alone.
Wood stove are extra dust environments for fans, I think the only current solution is to blow them out.
 
Wolfgangsta said:
Hi there,

This is my first visit to the boards, but I see it will be very helpful!

The fan on our Regency wood fireplace insert (fan model 3100) has been rattling for a long time now on high, and getting worse recently even on low. I thought something was loose, but perhaps it just needs a cleaning. I tried just using pressurized air through the grill holes, but I'm sure I need to actually take it apart to do a good job. However, I can't find how to open it up!! I've even downloaded the user manual from the Regency site, and it doesn't say how to remove it (and no mention of cleaning it, either). Anyone have this model and know how to proceed?

Okay, now off to clean my fridge... thanks for the reminder!!

Wolfie


If it is under the ashlip remove the ashlip trim and give it a pull straight back.
 
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