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I have a Phoenix Hearthstone, new to burning. The sides of my glass are a little dirty and the soot is cracking but it is still on the glass, is this normal? I have got the fire good and hot but it has not dissappered.
The glass on my Hearthstone Mansfield stays pretty clean except for the following:
1) I'm burning wood that is too wet.
2) The fire is smoldering or running cold for a long time (usually because of #1 above)
3) I don't run it on high at least for a few minutes once a day or so.
My normal procedure is to load it in the morning from the overnight coals and run the thing to maximum temp to burn out the detritus from overnight burning. Then I make sure I use dry wood and keep the stove around 4-500 surface temp most of the time for the burn. If I do that then I won't get thick soot on the glass but I will wipe down the glass every week or so when I give the stove a good ash cleaning anyway just to clean it up. Overall, the air wash will keep the glass clean if the stove is run hot enough with good wood.
AlaskaRedneck - what're your stovetop temps getting up to? If it stays black on the sides, it sounds like you are just a bit too cool - but very close to being hot enough. Hot running for a few days usually cleans the glass up good - no matter how mucked up it gets.
"good and hot" takes awhile to actually achieve sometimes your perspective on that will grow as you get more comfortable stretching the legs on that stove. It can probably take more than you're giving it right now
I have a pretty big piece of glass on my Clydesdale and noticed that the bottom corners on the window will get dirty unless and until I burn a good hot fire with well seasoned wood. I also noticed the stones that line the firebox look like the day I put them in there after a good long hot burn. Upon a cold startup the black stuff comes back but again is burned off upon the hottest cycle of the next fire..
In AK you're probably burning some sort of spruce or other evergreen softwood right? Well this year I am burning 100% doug fir and am finding that I get the black lower corners that won't burn off. Even when I run the stove hot, though they do get smaller. This is the tarry kind of deposit that doesn't come off really easily. The wood is very dry and the flue temps are always well above 400 so I don't feel like I am smothering the fire but maybe the evergreens are more prone to making these deposits, or maybe we have gasket leaks.
It's not a big deal and the black corners are just the very bottom couple of inches of the huge hearthstone windows.
sounds normal to me. On our Mansfield in the showroom the glass stays almost spotless, but we have a straight up chimney and 18 month old wood that has been cut, split and stored indoors.