Cleaning Harman XXV - Do you......

[teeravis1]

get a lot of ash/soot outside your stove when you clean it? The minute I open the door stuff falls onto the stove ledge and the floor. I scrape my heat exchangers and burn pot every morning and evening and every weekend I shut down the stove and clean the whole stove out, I scrape and vaccum it all out and clean the glass. Every time I scrape the burn pot and exchangers I get a lot of soot/ash floating out into the air and coming out of the stove onto the floor? Does this happen to anyone else? How do those of you that have it in a room with carpeting keep the ash and soot off the carpet. I have a hearth that sticks out at least 6 inches past the front of the stove but the floor in front of that still gets dirty.

Quiestion #2: Does anyone else get slight amounts of ash on the back of the stove (the slightly angled part where the stickers are right behind the top of the stove)? I do and am not sure if that is common or not. If I wipe it clean, a day later it has a slight amount of soot/ash on it again.

I use my forced air furnace fan to circulate the air in the house, and put in a new filter a week ago. I noticed on my old filter and my new one already that it is getting a black soot/ash color to it. I know it is that because it never happened until I got the stove, it is definetley ash/soot particles. Is it common to have that? Those of you that have it in your living areas do you find ash/soot in the house when dusting or whatever? Is this common? Does some soot/ash come through the stove through the distribution blower, or do you think it is from when I clean the stove, or do you think I have a leak somewhere? There is no visible spot where a large amount of ash/soot is visible on the floor or around/on the stove or pipes anywhere I can find.

Sorry for the long ramble, Didn't know how to ask in a short manner. Mainly I guess I am asking if others get a bit of ash/soot outside their stove in their house when cleaning, or just from running the stove. - Thanks for your patience :-S

 

[swalz]

I don't get all that ash around my house and very little gets on the floor when I clean it. My hearth dose extent about 12 inches from the front of the stove so I won't have a problem with carpet. No ash on the back of the stove either, but I do get some dust from dumping the bags.

 

[LIpelletpig]

I'll try to put in my two cents to help. I also have carpet in front of my hearth pad and I am 10 inches from the stove. I lay down an old large bath towel on the carpet before I open the door and do my weekly cleaning. I just know that once you start scraping the burn pot a piece or two can come flying out and land on my light colored carpet. So my advice lay down a towel or a flatened box etc.. For the dust in the house. I have noticed an increase of dust in my house especially where the stove is. I don't particularly think it's ash. It's the movement of air from the stove and the pull from the enviorment around that stove that stirs up the dust particales in the house that makes it more dusty in the house. In my earlier years I used to burn coal. In comparison, this is MUCH cleaner and a breeze to maintain in comparison. I hope that helps.

 

[Dougsey]

I scrape my heat exchangers and burn pot every morning and evening and every weekend I shut down the stove and clean the whole stove out, I scrape and vaccum it all out and clean the glass. Every time I scrape the burn pot and exchangers I get a lot of soot/ash floating out into the air and coming out of the stove onto the floor?

My personal opinion is that you are opening the door and cleaning way too much. I scrape the burnpot every two or three days with the stove running, and a shutdown/vacuum cleaning every six weeks or so.

 

[tinkabranc]

get a lot of ash/soot outside your stove when you clean it? The minute I open the door stuff falls onto the stove ledge and the floor. I scrape my heat exchangers and burn pot every morning and evening and every weekend I shut down the stove and clean the whole stove out, I scrape and vaccum it all out and clean the glass.

Sounds like most of your mess outside the stove is because you are cleaning the inside too much. :lol:

Sometimes I get a little ash fall onto the ash lip but it is because if falls off the door. Those little screws around the glass
collect a little bit of ash and it will end up on the carpet if the door is opened too far.
I only give the burnpot a quick scrape once a day. If you are scraping the burnpot twice a day, you are babying that stove ;-)

Every time I scrape the burn pot and exchangers I get a lot of soot/ash floating out into the air and coming out of the stove onto the floor? Does this happen to anyone else?

I only scrape the heat exchangers once a week when I do my weekly cleaning and always run the ash vac at same time.

 

[pelletwood]

I scrape my burnpot every 2 days.
Then once a week I shut the stove off to scrape the burnpot and vacuum all the dust and ash out of the stove.
It is important to keep the vacuum running with the hose in the stove when you are doing any scraping,
this keeps the dust from leaving the stove.

 

[lecomte38]

I run the shop vac with the pick up just under the brush. ALL the dust seems to get sucked up

 

[teeravis1]

If I let my stove go without emptying the ash pan every week I think in 2 weeks it would be overflowing. Does that sound correct?

I scrape my stove that much because I was told to give the exchangers and burn pot a quick scrape daily to keep them clean so the stove will burn better. I would love to not have to though. Do any of you notice a big difference in the heat output when doing the scraping every 2 or 3 days only?

I also usually leave the shop vac going when I do the weekly cleaning on the stove to try to suck up the stuff coming into the air out of the stove. Lots of soot falls from the top of the inside of the stove towards the front especially.

I have some boxes sitting in the middle of the floor about 5 to 6 ft in front of the stove. This morning I wiped my hand across the top of them when I went down to check the stove and my hand came off tainted black from the ash/soot dust on them. Do you think is from the last 4 weeks of scraping my stove twice a day and giving the weekly cleaning, or do you think I have a leak somewhere? REmember what I said about my furnace air filter also earlier in the thread.

What are the chances that the ash/soot is somehow coming from the stove when it is running? Is that a high probablilty or not?

Thanks for all your feedback.

 

[tinkabranc]

Could be a combo of things.

You say you use a shop vac for cleaning, what kind of filter are you using in it?
If not using a drywall filter, your vac could be blowing the ash into the air when you are cleaning.
Are you scraping the exchangers everyday with the vac?

 

[oc4man]

Tink...that could be the answer to his problem!! I use a shop vac with filter bags and a hepa filter which seems to control the ash dust.

 

[lessoil]

When I clean the burn pot I try to do it while the
combustion fan is running. It helps keep the dust in check
and is probably shooting out the pipe.

If that's true, wait until an unwanted solicitor is by the exhaust...
I'm sorry, did I say that? Just kidding!
Keep the ignitor clean so it does not burn up!
Installer said to tap the burn pot a few times with the tool
while the cover plate is off to dislodge the dust. So far so good.

Cleaning the rest of the stove will be very different.
Need a HEPA or Drywall Dust filter for the Shop Vac
I will be doing that next week.

 

[teeravis1]

Could be a combo of things.

You say you use a shop vac for cleaning, what kind of filter are you using in it?
If not using a drywall filter, your vac could be blowing the ash into the air when you are cleaning.
Are you scraping the exchangers everyday with the vac?

I use a 20 gallon shop vac with the white round cartridge filter that came with it. The first time I used it I tucked a bunch of toilet paper in its air vents to see if they got black to see if anything was getting thru. The toilet paper was as white with no black when I took it out, but maybe that was just luck and since then the vac has been spewing dust into the air. I hope so otherwise I don't know what to do, cause a stove that blows soot dust into the house is no good. This weekend I will wipe everything down in the basement and see if it gets full of soot dust before I use the shop vac again or not. Hopefully that will tell me if it is the shop vac.

 

[teeravis1]

I scrape my heat exchangers and burn pot every morning and evening and every weekend I shut down the stove and clean the whole stove out, I scrape and vaccum it all out and clean the glass. Every time I scrape the burn pot and exchangers I get a lot of soot/ash floating out into the air and coming out of the stove onto the floor?

My personal opinion is that you are opening the door and cleaning way too much. I scrape the burnpot every two or three days with the stove running, and a shutdown/vacuum cleaning every six weeks or so.

How often do you empty your ash pan? How about everyone else, how many weeks could you run without emptying the ash pan before it would fill up?

 

[imacman]

Teeravis,

I know someone that used a shop-vac type vacuum to clean their stove, and eventually the filter got so clogged that the suction made the filter collapse, and they ended up with a living room covered in black soot.

 

[hossthehermit]

Great thing about a pellet furnace in the cellar on a cement floor

 

[tinkabranc]

How often do you empty your ash pan?
How about everyone else, how many weeks could you run without emptying the ash pan
before it would fill up?

I give the burnpot a quick scrape once a day. I scrape/vac out the rest of the stove once a
week and empty the ashpan then. Sometimes I get lazy and let it go for two weeks.
The pan has never been more than 1/3 full even with the junk pellets I was burning a
couple of winters ago.

I never let my stove go more than two weeks so I could not tell you how fast the pan
would fill up.

 

[teeravis1]

How often do you empty your ash pan?
How about everyone else, how many weeks could you run without emptying the ash pan
before it would fill up?

I give the burnpot a quick scrape once a day. I scrape/vac out the rest of the stove once a
week and empty the ashpan then. Sometimes I get lazy and let it go for two weeks.
The pan has never been more than 1/3 full even with the junk pellets I was burning a
couple of winters ago.

I never let my stove go more than two weeks so I could not tell you how fast the pan
would fill up.

I am going on day 6 from the last time I emptied the ashpan and it is 2/3 to 3/4 full and there is lots of ash on both sides of the ashpan on the bottom of the stove. Does that sound like there is something wrong?

 

[tinkabranc]

Actually it does not sound like anything is wrong to me so far...
Some pellets create tons of ash and clinkers while others don't.

How many bags are you going through in this 6 day period?
What settings are you running your stove on?

EDIT: I think your vac filter is causing your grief

 

[teeravis1]

I think I went through 15 or 16 bags in those six days. Feed set at about 3.5 to 3.8 and temp set at 75 to 78 depending on the weather. I run my dist. blower fan as high as it goes, knob and switch on high , room temp.

I'm going to get some new filters for my vac monday then I will clean the stove monday night. Hope that is the trick.

 

[DOBS]

I quickly scrape the burn pot 2 times per day. I also give the glass a quick wipe with a dry cotton towel. The stove stays pretty clean. Once per week I shut her down and vaccuum her out with a stove vac. The most I get in the pan after a week is a few cups of ash, with the pan about 1/8th full. Outside temps have been in the 40s day, 20s-30s night on average and I'm burning about a bag a day keeping it at about 73' inside. I am seeing no where near the amount of ash you are describing. I'm burning cleanfire pellets. Maybe you should try a couple bags of a different brand to see if there is a difference???

 

[tinkabranc]

I think I went through 15 or 16 bags in those six days. Feed set at about 3.5 to 3.8 and temp set at 75 to 78 depending on the weather. I run my dist. blower fan as high as it goes, knob and switch on high , room temp.

I'm going to get some new filters for my vac monday then I will clean the stove monday night. Hope that is the trick.

Wow! 15-16 bags in 6 days? That explains why you have so much ash in a short time.
My stove is also installed in my basement and I am not going through a whole
bag a day yet.

Did you insulate your walls and floors where the stove is yet? If not, those block
walls are sucking up all your heat.

 

[teeravis1]

I think I went through 15 or 16 bags in those six days. Feed set at about 3.5 to 3.8 and temp set at 75 to 78 depending on the weather. I run my dist. blower fan as high as it goes, knob and switch on high , room temp.

I'm going to get some new filters for my vac monday then I will clean the stove monday night. Hope that is the trick.

Wow! 15-16 bags in 6 days? That explains why you have so much ash in a short time.
My stove is also installed in my basement and I am not going through a whole
bag a day yet.

Did you insulate your walls and floors where the stove is yet? If not, those block
walls are sucking up all your heat.

I'm working on the insulating, got about half of it done yesterday. Had to finish building all the walls and get the wiring in first, its taking me longer than I thought it would. I have the stove in my basement and am heating the two top levels of the house with it also. So heating three 1200 sq ft levels from basement to second floor (3600 sq ft all together). The past 6 days the temp has averaged probably 27 deg F. With not having the basement insulated I have had the stove set from 75 to 78, the basement is about what it is set at, the first floor is about 72 and 2nf floor at about 67 to 68. Hoping once the basement is insulated my pellet use drops and the temps on the upper two levels hone in a little closer with the stove. If they hone in 2 degrees and I can get to using 2 bags a day avg thru winter I will be pretty happy.

 

[tinkabranc]

There ya go! Once you get those walls insulated and change your filter on your
vac, you should see and feel a big difference. ;-)

 

[slheinlein]

I see that many people scrape the burn pot every day or two. Just curious why? I shut the stove down and give it a full cleaning once a week and that seems to work fine. It would seem difficult to scrape the burn pot while the stove it on.

 

[teeravis1]

Its not hard to give the burn pot a quick scrape when the stove is on, as long as you have a leather glove on to keep the heat off your hand. Why I do it, I guess because the dealer I bought the stove from told me to do it to keep the stove burning better, and I don't know any better.