Hello again, I hope I'm not creating a redundant post. I was surprised to find lack of info when I used the search function for this issue.
I seem to be having excessive ash buildup in the exhaust tubes of my Heat Commander and I'm wondering what the cause may be.
I've had my Drolet Heat Commander for almost a couple months now and I love it. I inspected the burn tubes after burning continuously for the first two weeks and they looked relatively clean with a little creosote buildup.
Since then, I've been using the Heat Commander on and off for a little under a month. The weather keeps getting warmer so I've had more cold starts than I had during the first two weeks of use. It is also definitely harder to establish a good draft when the weather is warmer (over 50F) so the cold starts take a little longer to get up to temp, meaning more smoke for longer on startup. However, I'm getting better at cleaner startups.
I did burn about one full firebox full of what I believe to be some sort of pine 4x6s that were 10 to 15MC. I didn't burn any more of them because they produced excessive ash that floated out the door when I went to reload the stove. I like to keep things clean so I wasn't a fan of the messy ashes floating out.
I have also been using small, dry, pine pallet pieces to start my fires because they burn fast and hot. I've been doing that since day one though.
Considering I only had creosote and little to no "ashes" in the burn tubes when I inspected them after the first couple weeks, it seems weird that there is so much "ash" in the burn tubes after checking them a month later.
Any ideas what would cause this? Possibly the pine? Or would it be more cold starts? Or is this normal? I also included pics of the stove pipe by the barometric damper. Ignore the ashes in those pics, they are from putting a piece of newspaper in there to establish draft so I could clean out the stove without a backdraft.
Furnace is installed in basement of 2 story house. Barometric damper set to .06. Figure lower setting would introduce more cold air meaning more creosote.
Wood is all around .15 to .20MC on average. Not ideal, will be better next year.
Sorry for the lengthy post and thanks for reading.
I seem to be having excessive ash buildup in the exhaust tubes of my Heat Commander and I'm wondering what the cause may be.
I've had my Drolet Heat Commander for almost a couple months now and I love it. I inspected the burn tubes after burning continuously for the first two weeks and they looked relatively clean with a little creosote buildup.
Since then, I've been using the Heat Commander on and off for a little under a month. The weather keeps getting warmer so I've had more cold starts than I had during the first two weeks of use. It is also definitely harder to establish a good draft when the weather is warmer (over 50F) so the cold starts take a little longer to get up to temp, meaning more smoke for longer on startup. However, I'm getting better at cleaner startups.
I did burn about one full firebox full of what I believe to be some sort of pine 4x6s that were 10 to 15MC. I didn't burn any more of them because they produced excessive ash that floated out the door when I went to reload the stove. I like to keep things clean so I wasn't a fan of the messy ashes floating out.
I have also been using small, dry, pine pallet pieces to start my fires because they burn fast and hot. I've been doing that since day one though.
Considering I only had creosote and little to no "ashes" in the burn tubes when I inspected them after the first couple weeks, it seems weird that there is so much "ash" in the burn tubes after checking them a month later.
Any ideas what would cause this? Possibly the pine? Or would it be more cold starts? Or is this normal? I also included pics of the stove pipe by the barometric damper. Ignore the ashes in those pics, they are from putting a piece of newspaper in there to establish draft so I could clean out the stove without a backdraft.
Furnace is installed in basement of 2 story house. Barometric damper set to .06. Figure lower setting would introduce more cold air meaning more creosote.
Wood is all around .15 to .20MC on average. Not ideal, will be better next year.
Sorry for the lengthy post and thanks for reading.