Hopper Fire last night

[Francois]

Here is the deal. Without first cleaning your flue you can't really establish a good schedule. You are guessing. I know that I can go more than a month with mine because I have cleaned it to get a handle on when it should be done. And then sometimes I do it anyway because why gamble , it's not like it's hard to do.

Thanks, you're right. I'll do that this weekend. Sure, doing it will bring me the feedback that I need on how often I should do it.

 

[SmokeyTheBear]

Are you talking about this specific model of stove or in general? I'm almost at 3 tons this season. The installers told me to clean once or twice a year and the user manual talk about two times a year. Now it's more like once a month.

No I'm talking about all stove installations, the thing about cleaning is it is specific to the entire system configuration and the mess that the pellets (or other fuel) produce.

I'll give an example I have a ton of known just meets the PFI premium standard pellets I get 20 pounds of ash out of it, that ash has to go somewhere if it all hit the ash pan no issues and you could burn several seasons and not have to clean anything but the ash pan. However it doesn't all hit the ash pan so the question becomes where does it go, well some goes out the end of the vent system we don't need to worry about that clogging up the works, whatever is left is inside the stove system interfering with the stove's air flow, this interference slowly degrades the burn which in turn produces more crud to send through the rest of the stove system, the cycle has started and is accelerating.

Now picture a pellet like a top of the line Douglas Fir that tests out under 0.2 percent ash or in this case you have only 4 pounds to start with. You can now go longer between cleanings than you could with the just meets the standard pellets.

The vent system is where most of the stuff ends up as the combustion blower can usually get it at least that far (there are exceptions to this).

Now we have a question of how much can a vent system take before it has a problem that will make matters worse. Well the amount of venting comes into play as does the diameter, with a larger diameter there is more time available between cleanings because there is more room to hold the mess without it it seriously affecting air flow. The longer the vent system the more places the mess can pileup. When I talk about vent length I use EVL as my measurement yardstick.

Now that we have the major players somewhat determined, one should be able to see that a single cleaning recommendation based upon time is useless, in fact it is downright dangerous.

The best cleaning schedule is to monitor your system and inspect the results of the burn and the amount of crud in the venting it is usually easy to tell if you have to play with any draft/damper settings that result in those needing to be open more than they used to be even after you did the normal ash pan/burn pot/ heat exchanger cleaning or you have trouble getting a decent flame (some stoves don't have such items) it is time to do a deep clean.

You will note that even this method has weasel words in it.

But as alternativeheat said you need to start from a clean system in order to figure a usage based cleaning schedule. I have 3" venting and it is at its limit for all practical purposes so I use the one ton mark plus or minus a decent day outside to do the deed. I also burn about 5 tons a year so I have about 5 really deep cleanings which includes the venting. That is far more than the installers said to you. If I had 4" venting I have no doubt that I could go with a mid and end of season cleaning provided I don't burn dirt in a bad pellets But being somewhat of a chicken (ba gawk) when it comes to playing with things that can do serious damage I'd be certain to monitor it and adjust the schedule to be on the safe side.

 

[Eyball]

I took the vertical 18' feet out of the chimney and cleaned today and reassembled with the 90 at the bottom and took out the increaser T. Going to install the rest of the 4" pipe to the stove tomorrow. This is how much ash came out of the 18'. I did not think it was that bad.

 

[Lake Girl]

Surprise!

 

[hyfire]

Wow! how much of this was in the horizontal section you think?

 

[Eyball]

This is just from the 18 vertical part. I did not clean the rest as I replaced it with 4" pipe. It does not look bad though but does have some buildup. Maybe 1/8 inch.