How often do you vacuum and clean your stove?

[geek]

Every bleepin' day, like clockwork. I have an ash vacuum and it's a five minute job, including emptying the ash vacuum outside. The deep round burn pot in the Napoleon and the top feed of the pellets causes a clinker if I let it burn much longer than a day, with all but the best of the best of the best pellets. Extremely hot, low ash pellets will burn for two days without forming a clinker.

Per above, it's a five minute job. With an ash vacuum I don't have to shut the stove down for hours to clean it.

It brings up an interesting question: do stoves that push the pellets into the burn pot from the bottom require less cleaning because the new pellets push the ash from the old pellets out of the burn pot?

WOW, sounds like the saga I'm going through with my Napoleon NPS45 free standing.

I am coming to the conclusion this units are a picky/fuzzy SOB...!!
Cannot wait to sell mine..

 

[Chris223]

I have a quad insert as well. Other than a few repairs, I've had the stove "serviced" once but all they really did was vacuum out the whole thing inside and took it out of the fireplace and vacuumed all around behind it and in the internals, which I can now confidently do on my own. What else should they do in an annual "service" of the stove?

I get the fireplace chimney swept every other year. This year I watched and they vacuumed/shook the stove exhaust vent from the top and bottom of the chimney into a shop vac as part of the sweeping.

When my dealer comes out to service, they do everything that I usually do, but they also brush all the way up the vent pipe (which being an insert runs ALL the way up my chimney, I don't feel like doing that myself, much rather pay them the $100 they charge to come out and do it). I've also watched him remove the blower motor and completely clean it and the fan, as well clean the motor in the back of the stove that blows the hot air into the room. So they do everything as it should, I've been very pleased with the guy who does the servicing from my dealer (can't say the same about the other people there lol) but the guy who does the in house servicing is great. My stove looks brand new when he's done doing the cleaning, minus the obvious signs of being now 3 years old, lol.

Your entire venting should be brushed and vacuumed every ton]

That seems excessive. Especially when most people are burning 4-5 tons per year. Both Quadrafire dealers in my area (the one I bought from and the one a co-worker of mine bough their stove from) tell us once per year, when we're done burning for the season, is when we should have it serviced. This is also what I've always heard from anyone else I know that owns a stove. Last year, just because of how cold it was and how many more pellets I was burning, I did have it serviced though in January by the dealer, just for peace of mind, when he was done I asked him if everything seemed ok because of how much more usage it was seeing due to the weather and he said it was fine, no more ash than to be expected.

 

[becasunshine]

WOW, sounds like the saga I'm going through with my Napoleon NPS45 free standing.

I am coming to the conclusion this units are a picky/fuzzy SOB...!!
Cannot wait to sell mine..

Geek, what kinds of problems are you having with your Napoleon?

It took me forever to figure out that in order to get the most heat for the least ash and the least chance of clinkers, I had to open the damper way up with most pellets- it's not unusual to run the stove with a feed rate of four and the damper open to four- and turn the convection fan down to let the heat exchange pipes build up some heat.

If we open the damper and turn the convection fan down, we get pretty decent heat and we can go about 24 hours without having to empty the burn pot with most pellets.

 

[rich2500]

Daily I dump the burn pot because of burning a corn mix,once a week a complete vacuum that takes all of 5 mins.

 

[tiger]

What, you have to clean these things,I'm going back to wood.

I know you meant that in jest but it's a fair comment. On my wood insert, after a weekend's burn, all I did was scoop the ash out and clean the glass. 2-3 minutes, perhaps?

 

[becasunshine]

I know you meant that in jest but it's a fair comment. On my wood insert, after a weekend's burn, all I did was scoop the ash out and clean the glass. 2-3 minutes, perhaps?

1. We are not yet felling, cutting, hauling, splitting, or curing our firewood beyond letting it sit from spring 'til fall in our yard (and testing it with a moisture meter to make sure it's dry) so in some ways this is not a fair comparison.

2. We do stack our firewood, it's not quite that turn key. And we move it from the wood pile to the house.

3. We help unload, move, stack our pellets when we buy them by the ton from a particular vendor. Sometimes we load up, haul and unload our pellets when we find good pellets on sale elsewhere. And we move them from the house to the garage.

4. Obviously we clean both stoves.

5. We have to load our wood stove more often than our pellet stove by about a factor of 2:1 on most days.

6. We have to clean our pellet stove more often than we clean our wood stove by about a factor of 3:1 or 4:1 on most weeks.

7. Overall the pellet stove is quicker and easier to clean with less mess than the wood stove on a daily basis.

8. Haven't cleaned the chimney yet on the wood stove so I have no comparison yet on the chimney cleaning process for the wood stove vs. the tear down process for the pellet stove.

9. It's easier to clean the glass on the pellet stove- much easier- than it is to clean the glass on the wood stove on most days.

10. I guess for us the work breaks down to be about equal between each stove- just a little different from one to the other.

 

[geek]

Geek, what kinds of problems are you having with your Napoleon?

It took me forever to figure out that in order to get the most heat for the least ash and the least chance of clinkers, I had to open the damper way up with most pellets- it's not unusual to run the stove with a feed rate of four and the damper open to four- and turn the convection fan down to let the heat exchange pipes build up some heat.

If we open the damper and turn the convection fan down, we get pretty decent heat and we can go about 24 hours without having to empty the burn pot with most pellets.

I have the NPS45 which has the digital control board, so I up the air trim all the way up to 5 and the feed trim to the lowest at 1.
This still has not made a difference.

See my thread here if you have the chance:

https://www.hearth.com/talk/threads/napoleon-nps45-cake-forming-in-burn-pot.132234/

 

[tiger]

1. We are not yet felling, cutting, hauling, splitting, or curing our firewood beyond letting it sit from spring 'til fall in our yard (and testing it with a moisture meter to make sure it's dry) so in some ways this is not a fair comparison.

2. We do stack our firewood, it's not quite that turn key. And we move it from the wood pile to the house.

3. We help unload, move, stack our pellets when we buy them by the ton from a particular vendor. Sometimes we load up, haul and unload our pellets when we find good pellets on sale elsewhere. And we move them from the house to the garage.

4. Obviously we clean both stoves.

5. We have to load our wood stove more often than our pellet stove by about a factor of 2:1 on most days.

6. We have to clean our pellet stove more often than we clean our wood stove by about a factor of 3:1 or 4:1 on most weeks.

7. Overall the pellet stove is quicker and easier to clean with less mess than the wood stove on a daily basis.

8. Haven't cleaned the chimney yet on the wood stove so I have no comparison yet on the chimney cleaning process for the wood stove vs. the tear down process for the pellet stove.

9. It's easier to clean the glass on the pellet stove- much easier- than it is to clean the glass on the wood stove on most days.

10. I guess for us the work breaks down to be about equal between each stove- just a little different from one to the other.

1. Only cut & split one tree in my life -- never again.
2. Oh, so much less dragging around, and less "cube" for the same amount of heat.
3. +1, up from the basement so much easier that in from the shed in he mud or snow.
4.
5. Same except I bet our wood stove needed 3x the frequency of loading
6. Same frequency of cleaning, weekly, but on the wood stove there was never an after-ton major cleaning.
7. Not me, wood stove took no time at all to clean. What I did experience was more house cleaning, despite a closed-end wood tote, constantly vacuuming the floors to pick up firewood "debris"
8. I haven't cleaned the PELLET stove chimney yet but I am sure that it will be more frequent than the every-other-year job on the wood stove.
9. Seems about the same in my experience, but during-burn the wood stove seemed to stay clear longer.
10. TRUE!

 

[TimfromMA]

The combination of a much more efficient burn causing very lightweight ash and an exhaust blower actively pushing air through the combustion chamber results in more ash making it into the vent. Pellet stoves do have very little if any creosote problems though.

 

[F4jock]

1) Cut and split lots in my day. Fun at first becomes drudgery later on.
2) Yep
3) Yep
4) Yep
5) Yep
6) I had an old, airtight stove. Cleaning for ash and creosote was lots more labor than what I do with my Harman which is pretty much nothing except load pellets for three weeks at a time.
7) Yep.
8) Only clean my chimney every two years and not much in it even then.
9) Was no glass on my wood stove. Only takes a few seconds to clean glass on the pellet stove.
10) No way. Wood stove took lots more work!

 

[becasunshine]

I have the NPS45 which has the digital control board, so I up the air trim all the way up to 5 and the feed trim to the lowest at 1.
This still has not made a difference.

See my thread here if you have the chance:

https://www.hearth.com/talk/threads/napoleon-nps45-cake-forming-in-burn-pot.132234/

OK. Read the thread.

Here's what I can add, not sure if it will help:

1. I agree that the Napoleon pellet stoves are very pellet quality dependent. First year we burned Hamers, and they were great. The stove absolutely positively hated the next batch of Hamers we bought from the very same vendor. Evidently this was a known problem with Hamers that year because the vendor credited us with new bags of pellets for every bag of Hamers we had left in our garage, and for every bag of Hamers that clogged up our stove. Can't complain about it overall but it was a pain to get through that process.

2. Somersets burn well in our stove. O'Malley's burn well but we have to open the damper up to 4 or they clog the pot. Presto Logs burn well too. Turmans burn absolutely immaculately in our stove and put out the best heat. They are a little more pricey- not too much more but a little more- and I can only get them from one supplier in this area. That supplier does not deliver. I don't mind going to get the pellets, loading them up in my truck. I've done it by myself several times- but then I have to factor out and back gas into the price of the pellets. I can buy O'Malley's for less and that vendor literally delivers them to my garage door- and helps me load them in.

3. After some messing around with it, I've found, per above, that our stove likes the damper opened up- a LOT. About the only pellet with which we can close down the damper is Turmans. Otherwise I've made my peace with dumping some heat outside in the name of a clean burn. We can compensate with most pellets by turning the convection/room blower down and letting the exchange tubes hold onto a little more heat.

4. Door gaskets and combustion motor gaskets and even the gasket around the ash pan are crucial. We had to replace our door gasket last year? The year before? It's not difficult but you do need to order the specific Napoleon door gasket.

5. Best source I've found for Napoleon stove parts: Mountain View Hearth Products. They advertise here. Their web site is immaculate and their customer service is awesome. Fast shipping, no hassles. I order combustor motor mount gaskets in multiples. Remember, two is one, one is none. If you have to pull the combustion fan motor to clean or for any reason and you tear the gasket, you're done until you get a new one. We ordered the replacement door gasket from them as well.


6. When you pull the combustion motor, the tendency is to look to and vacuum to your left- out the exhaust pathway. Look to your right as well. The exhaust pathway continues behind your firebox. This part of the pathway got major clogged up when we were trying to burn that particularly ashy batch of Hamers. We have an ash vacuum with a pellet stove cleaning kit. For the Big Clean, I shut the stove down, let it cool completely, and I use a standard Shop Vac with a drywall filter and a drywall bag in it. The pieces parts of the pellet stove cleaning kit fit the Shop Vac hose as well. One part is a rubber plug with a length of not very flexible plastic tubing on it. The plug fits into the hose on either the ash vac or the Shop Vac. The plastic tubing fits into nooks and crannies in the pellet stove. Hubs took this part, went to Big Box Home Improvement Store that sells plastic tubing by the length, and got long piece of flexible plastic tubing that fits over the end of the not so flexible plastic tubing attached to the rubber plug. Follow? Attaching the flexible plastic tubing to the inflexible plastic tubing, then plugging that rubber plug into the Shop Vac hose gives me a plastic tube with suction that I can thread into almost anywhere in the stove guts. It's sort of like giving your stove a colonoscopy, without the scope part. (There's some imagery for you.) Threading that plastic tube to the RIGHT in the exhaust pathway, up behind the fire box and the fire wall, sucked out an amazing amount of ash and cleared up all problems after that batch of Hamers.

7. My major complaint with the Napoleon is that on the preferred feed setting of 4 (according to the manual, this is the most efficient setting) our stove delivers slightly less than 2 pounds of pellets per hour to the pot. It takes us about 22 hours to burn through a 40 lbs. bag of pellets. That translates to a burn rate of about 1.82 lbs./hour. Using the optimistic estimate of 8500 btu's/pound of pellets as used in the Napoleon NPS40 owner's manual, this means that at 100% efficiency (virtually impossible) we are getting a maximum of 15,470 btu's/hour out of this stove. If we use the 20% +/- factor as listed in the owners manual to adjust for pellet size, it gives us a range of 12,376 btu's/hour to 18,564 btu's/hour. But no pellet stove runs at 100% efficiency, and Wolfe Industry's doesn't list an efficiency rating for the NPS40 as far as I know. (You bet I'll look for that piece of information if I ever buy a pellet stove again.) Popular Mechanics lists the average pellet stove efficiency as 78% to 85%. Applied to our numbers, we are getting a range of 9653 btu's/hour to 15,779 btu's/hour out of this stove at feed setting 4.

Our owner's manual states that the stove is capable of a burn rate of 1 to 5 pounds per hour, and will deliver 8500 to 42,500 btu's per hour. Obviously this is using an 8500 btu's per pound of pellet figure. Extrapolating, I would assume (there's that word) that a feed rate setting of 4 would deliver 4 pounds of pellets to the burn pot, or potentially up to 34,000 btu's/hour out of the stove. If I adjust that number down by the 20% +/- factor (in the minus direction) and then further adjust it down to the lowest efficiency figure given by Popular Mechanics (78%) then I would expect us to get a minimum of 21,216 btu's/hour out of this stove. As you can see from the above numbers, we ain't getting anywhere near that.

The manual does not specifically say that at feed settings 2, 3 and 4 that the auger will deliver the corresponding number of pounds of pellets per hour to the burn pot, but I do not think it's illogical to form that conclusion. It would, in the case of our stove, be inaccurate. Our stove has never delivered 4 pounds of pellets per hour into the burn pot. We have never burned through a bag of pellets in 10 hours. So, taking the manually literally, a feed rate setting of 1 delivers one pound of pellets per hour to the burn pot, and a feed rate setting of 5 delivers five pounds of pellets per hour to the burn pot. And apparently everything in between 1 and 5 does whatever the hell it does. (Can I say "hell" on Hearth.com?) Our stove has settled on a nice, leisurely 1.82 pounds/hour at the preferred feed setting of 4.

We did a study on the duty load of the feed dial rheostat and came to the conclusion, after studying it and some correspondence with the Wolf Industry engineers, that the duty load on that rheostat was correct. The rheostat was turning the auger for the correct amount of time, with the correct interval of time in between turns, for each setting. The auger simply is not delivering 4 pounds of pellets to the burn pot per hour at feed setting 4.

I went back and forth with a customer service rep at Wolfe Industries last December for several emails. He was presenting my observations to the engineers. After a few exchanges, the customer service rep and the engineers just sort of disappeared. I had the impression that they had no further answers/information for me. It is what it is.

So, the other night it was bloody blasted cold in here because we'd been away and we'd left the heat on 50'F. It was nighttime, it was getting colder, and we needed to gain against the increasing cold outside. So I turned the feed up to 5 and let 'er rip. Somewhere in the manual or online, we've read that one should not run this stove on feed setting 5 for more than an hour or you'd risk over-firing it. So I committed to keeping a steady eye on the stove for safety's sake, and not letting it run on high for more than an hour.

We didn't make it for an hour before the burn pot clogged up, even with the damper wide open as far as it would go, at 5.

So that answers that- we can't run this stove on high for any appreciable time without a burn pot clog. Let that go on, and you could build a pellet bridge from an overflowing burn pot into the feed tube, and cause a hopper fire. No thanks.

So, my major complaint is that I do not see how we'd ever get the advertised maximum btu's out of this stove.

That being said, we are out from under manufacturer's warranty. The stove store that sold us this pellet stove has changed hands and no longer carries Napoleon products. Swapping it out now will increase our payback horizon further than is practical for us with our current configuration. Stretching out the payback horizon might make it impossible to achieve before we are out of this residence entirely and on to our retirement residence (in which we've installed a Blaze King Princess wood stove.)

So we work at hanging onto the btu's that it does make, and we work with what we have.

Bonus round- I put hydroponics gardens in the room with the stove, and we grown our own salad veggies all year long. The vegetables love the gentle heat and the breeze created by the convection fan. I also put a clothes rack at a safe distance from the stove and use that heat and air movement to dry our laundry. We save money by not paying for electricity to run the dryer. We save additional money in heating costs because the dryer is not sucking air we've already paid to heat out of the house, heating it up some more, then dumping it outside through the dryer vent.

And, at the end of the day, it's an economical stove to own and operate. I can tear it down and work on it, my husband can tear it down, work on it and repair it if necessary, and it doesn't burn up a lot of pellets.

Which brings me to a question- is the heat output of a stove a simple matter of btu's per pound of fuel in, btu's out- or do btu's "build up" with heat stored in the stove then radiated out into the room? Is there any way in which a stove makes btu's synergistic?

So, overall, this pellet stove is probably saving us a good deal of money but not all of it is directly due to burning pellets.

 

[geek]

Thanks very much for all your feedback.
The door gasket is finally at my door today and will replace later when I get home.
Not being pessimistic but have a feeling this will not fix the issue...

I tried so many different brands and you're right, this unit is picky. I bought 1 bag of American Wood Fibers at home depot the other day and really liked how it burned but they didn't have anything left later that day.

What really bothers me is that the trim option does not seem to make a difference. I've been running the unit with air trim at 5 and feed trim at 1 and nope, same issue, pellets almost overflow due to the hard cake formation.

Anyway, let's see how replacing the door gasket helps, or not...

 

[becasunshine]

Thanks very much for all your feedback.
The door gasket is finally at my door today and will replace later when I get home.
Not being pessimistic but have a feeling this will not fix the issue...

I tried so many different brands and you're right, this unit is picky. I bought 1 bag of American Wood Fibers at home depot the other day and really liked how it burned but they didn't have anything left later that day.

What really bothers me is that the trim option does not seem to make a difference. I've been running the unit with air trim at 5 and feed trim at 1 and nope, same issue, pellets almost overflow due to the hard cake formation.

Anyway, let's see how replacing the door gasket helps, or not...

I notice that your Napoleon has been installed for 4 years now. Has it ever worked correctly?

Ours doesn't put out the heat I think it should put out- but then again, it doesn't burn half the pellets I'd expect it to burn either, so what we don't get in heat we don't spend on pellets.

It sounds like your stove isn't even functional.

Has it ever worked as expected or has it always built up pellets to overflowing?

 

[geek]

I notice that your Napoleon has been installed for 4 years now. Has it ever worked correctly?

Ours doesn't put out the heat I think it should put out- but then again, it doesn't burn half the pellets I'd expect it to burn either, so what we don't get in heat we don't spend on pellets.

It sounds like your stove isn't even functional.

Has it ever worked as expected or has it always built up pellets to overflowing?

Last year I was cleaning the burn pot daily. This year is worse because the cake forms after a few hours of burning, you can see the lazy flame.
I think it worked just fine the 1st year (don't recall the 2nd year) and I cleaned the burn pot every 3 days or so. I was so happy coming from the Englander which required me daily cleaning as well.
Last year I tried Somersets, Maine Wood Pellets and a bag here and there, no dice. This year even a bag of softwood like North Country will have issues burning a full day.....just frustrating....
Either I sell the unit and seal the hole on the wall, or buy a unit that I can run for a full week without the need to open the firebox...

 

[becasunshine]

Based on our now Season 6 year with the Napoleon NPS40, I don't think you are ever going to get a week in between cleanings with this stove. Between the top feed (the combination of the combustion fan pulling air from the damper through the fire box and the splash of the new pellets into the pot bouncing ash out, not nearly as effective IMHO as bottom feed units pushing the ash out with new pellets) and the deep, round burn pot, it's going to be about a once a day chore.

We've replaced our door gasket once. By the time we did, I can't remember if we failed the "dollar bill test" or not but we had hella lazy orange flame and soot and clinkers. It was pretty much what you are describing. Replacing the door gasket fixed it.

Try this: since it sucks anyway (good grief this thread has given me Sailor Mouth, sorry!) if you have a spare combustion fan motor mount gasket, or if you know that the one you have on there now is in good enough shape to handle being removed, tear that baby down tonight and vacuum the innards. Vacuum to the left of the combustion motor mount and vacuum to the right. If you have a Shop Vac you should be able to snake the hose up in there enough to get most of what's behind the fire box. Go ahead and open the ports in the bottom of the fire box and vacuum those out too.

yes I just talked you into a "big clean."

Then replace the door gasket- it's really not difficult but be careful handling the panes of ceramic glass so you don't drop one and break it, they are surprisingly heavy- and fire her up.

I'm betting that *is* going to fix your problem.

 

[chuckster]

Vacuum and scrape every two weeks. Leaf blower trick, clean fines box and clean ESP probe two or three times a season. Clean glass every day. Run on stove temp to keep room temp nice and even. Fan always on high speed. Four years now without a problem. KNOCK ON WOOD

 

[geek]

I always do the leaf blower cleaning from outside and also recently replaced the combustion blower motor gasket (and cleaned really well left to right using a vacuum).

 

[F4jock]

I always do the leaf blower cleaning from outside and also recently replaced the combustion blower motor gasket (and cleaned really well left to right using a vacuum).

Two weeks no cleaning. Going for four this time.

 

[SXIPro]

Scrape burnpot and empty ash pan once a week full cleaning every ton.

 

[jdinny]

Pull ash out, scrape burnpot and give it a few whacks every morning before work.
Same ritual when I fill hopper before bed.
Wipe glass off when it's dirty.
Full stove clean every ton.

 

[Flammam]

Weekly on Sundays. Only complaint I have with the Austroflaam is the lack of a ash drawer. I have had ash piled up inside an inch over the top of the burn pot. Shutdown, shovel out ash, vacuum up inside, clean glass, relight. Every ton I pull the front plates and vacuum out the heat exchanger area.

 

[gfreek]

The Harman, daily I pull the ashes from the edge of the pot. About every 2 weeks, I do a stove cleaning, dump ash bucket, once a month i clean the pipe & ESP..

 

[hookthefish]

I have had 3 different stoves and each one had different cleaning frequencies.
This is my 2nd year with a Quadra-fire CB 1200 burning Lacrete Super Premium Softwood Pellets and I have been amazed that I can go 3 week to a month before my ash pan fills up but I usually just clean every thing on the 3rd week. Today I pulled my stove pipe to check for ash and nothing was there after burning for 2 months now.
I believe it really depends on the quality of pellet you burn.