Cleaning an epa stove

[msherer]

how often do you clean the burn tubes in your EPA stove? I've just went through a second season with my stove and never cleaned the tubes. Thanks for any advice.

Matt

 

[blacktail]

Never.

 

[zig]

There's nothing in them to clean.

 

[firefighterjake]

I might run a soft bristled vacuum brush over them at the end of the burning season ... emphasis on the word "might" ... heck last year I never got around to the end of the season cleaning.

 

[Swedishchef]

As far as I know it is not needed.

I have never cleaned mine in 5 years. I may give them a slight going over to remove some of the mineralization if possible from the outer surface. I find it's like the equivalent of cleaning INSIDE a water tank on a toilet You can do it but there's no performance gain

Andrew

 

[kennyp2339]

It depends on how you clean you chimney, I have and my buddy has a straight up through the roof setup, when we clean our chimney's, it requires us to pull the tubes out and remove the baffle boards (my old stove, and his NC30) then we sweep the chimney and the ash / creosote falls through the collar and ends up in the stove box, I use to take each tube out and hold it vertical and drop the end into a empty bucket, a little ash did come out, but it was nothing major.

 

[David.Ervin]

I took the tubes out of my Northstar when I was poking around for a chimney blockage (long story) as part of making room to pull the baffle out. Despite burning 6-ish cords of wood over the last two years, there was literally nothing inside them. Air flows through them and out while you're burning, so I wouldn't think even fly ash could settle in there.

 

[begreen]

If the stove is functioning and operated correctly the secondary burn tubes are constantly expelling air. This essentially makes them self-cleaning.