Today, while cleaning my stove, I noticed sticky black soot on the inside parts of the stove. I first noticed it with my last cleaning, however, every cleaning before that I never had any problems with any creosote build up. I have been running the stove in stove temp mode pretty much all winter, and lately at very low settings, between 1 and 3. Could this be causing it? I recently switched pellets from Hamers and Homesteads to American Wood Fiber and Stove Chow, so maybe it's the cheaper pellets?
Every time I clean the stove, usually once every 7-10 days, I do a thorough cleaning exactly as is specified in my owner's manual, so I know the problem's not a dirty stove. What I've been doing is reversing my shop vac to blower and sticking the nozzle all the way into the flue passageway next to the combustion blower to blast out all the accumulated ash. Could I have damaged the exhaust gas probe (ESP) by doing this and perhaps that is what is causing the creosote build up? I've attached some pics to show what the build up looks like. I spent a lot of time today scraping away at it with a drywall scraper.
Every time I clean the stove, usually once every 7-10 days, I do a thorough cleaning exactly as is specified in my owner's manual, so I know the problem's not a dirty stove. What I've been doing is reversing my shop vac to blower and sticking the nozzle all the way into the flue passageway next to the combustion blower to blast out all the accumulated ash. Could I have damaged the exhaust gas probe (ESP) by doing this and perhaps that is what is causing the creosote build up? I've attached some pics to show what the build up looks like. I spent a lot of time today scraping away at it with a drywall scraper.