OFFICIAL: Post your leaf blower stove pipe cleaning pics.

[mullet]

Awesome job jamesdjs, I am just putting a copy here for reference.

I took a video of cleaning the pellet stove with a leaf blower.
I only had about 20 days of burning but you can see all the ash that comes out from it.
I borrowed a Toro leaf blower with a vacuum attachement and a little duct tape to seal it and that all I did.

Enjoy

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[mullet]

Awesome job krooser, I am just putting a copy here for reference.

Ok... here's the long awaited post about how to clean you stove using an electric leaf blower.

Last Feb I had trouble with my stove producing a lazy flame and having trouble staying lit. I called Earth Sense Energy Systems (Dale, WI) and asked to send a tech out to help me get this thing going again (I bought my used St. Croix stove from them in October,'07). I wasn't home when the service guy showed up but I did speak to him over the phone while he was there. He asked me how often I had cleaned my stove and what pellets I was using. After we spoke a few minutes he told me he was going to clean my stove using an electric leaf blower and he would also reset my air damper as I had fooled with it trying to get the stove to operate properly.

I got home within an hour of my conversation with the tech over the phone... I expected to see him but my wife said he was long gone... only spent about 20 minutes cleaning the stove and setting the damper. The stove was now burning just like it had the day we fired it up in November, '07... it had a beautiful flame and was nice and hot.

So I called the tech again and he explained what he used to adapt the leaf blower to my vent pipe. This week I finally took time to try to duplicate what he had built as it was time to give my stove a good cleaning.

First you must use an electric leaf blower that has provisions for a vacuum... that's the secret. I understand that most gas blowers do not.... but I'm not sure about that. I bough a Weed Eater brand blower for $29.00 at my local True Value store. I didn't shop for price, features etc. Frankly I couild care less what it was as long as it would work.

I had to remove one piece from the blower in order to use it as a vacuum and I did that according to the supplied instructions. Then I purchased two things... one was a 4" long piece of schedule 40 PVC pipe for $1.50 and a galvanized sheet metal adaptor for a 4" stove pipe (also $1.50).

On my blower there are two "nubs" inside the blower that locate the part that I had removed from the blower. The 4" piece of plastic pipe goes into that intake side so I had to put two notches into the plastic pipe in order to allow the pipe to seat into the blower. Your blower may be different. Then I simply put the sheet metal adaptor into the plastic pipe and slid both into the blower.

I did have to wrap several rounds of tape (in this case aluminized stove pipe tape) around the plastic pipe in order to get a snug fit for the pipe. I used the stove pipe tape 'cuz it's what I had laying around... you could use duct tape or masking tape or whatever you have around.

The first photo shows the pellet pipe adaptor... pretty simple.

The next photo is of the blower mounted to the vent pipe.

This one shows how it looks from a few feet away.

I took two pix of the crap blowing out of the blower but I didn't have the flash activated so they did not turn out. Suffice to say you don't want to be within 50 feet of the business end of the leaf blower when it's doing it's thing. I left the blower run for about 3 minutes.... after that little ash was coming from the blower and I shut it off.

The last photo is of the stove after the cleaning. You will see some ash around the perimeter of the fire pot but please note that I did not vacuum anything out of the stove prior to using the vac. I hadn't cleaned the stove for about 6 days so it really did do a good job of sucking out most of the ash from the stove. I did, however, dump the ash pan before I used the vac.

Here's a photo of the pellets I've been using in my stove since Dec. of last year... ESES's house brand called Uncle Jed's Cold Remedy. .... They also sell them in bulk and are called Canadian Mix when you buy in bulk.

Questions? Ask away. I am by no means an expert but thise deal with the leaf blower seems to do the trick to clean a stove in all of those hard to reach places.

 

[jamesdjs]

Awesome job krooser, I am just putting a copy here for reference.

Ok... here's the long awaited post about how to clean you stove using an electric leaf blower.

Last Feb I had trouble with my stove producing a lazy flame and having trouble staying lit. I called Earth Sense Energy Systems (Dale, WI) and asked to send a tech out to help me get this thing going again (I bought my used St. Croix stove from them in October,'07). I wasn't home when the service guy showed up but I did speak to him over the phone while he was there. He asked me how often I had cleaned my stove and what pellets I was using. After we spoke a few minutes he told me he was going to clean my stove using an electric leaf blower and he would also reset my air damper as I had fooled with it trying to get the stove to operate properly.

I got home within an hour of my conversation with the tech over the phone... I expected to see him but my wife said he was long gone... only spent about 20 minutes cleaning the stove and setting the damper. The stove was now burning just like it had the day we fired it up in November, '07... it had a beautiful flame and was nice and hot.

So I called the tech again and he explained what he used to adapt the leaf blower to my vent pipe. This week I finally took time to try to duplicate what he had built as it was time to give my stove a good cleaning.

First you must use an electric leaf blower that has provisions for a vacuum... that's the secret. I understand that most gas blowers do not.... but I'm not sure about that. I bough a Weed Eater brand blower for $29.00 at my local True Value store. I didn't shop for price, features etc. Frankly I couild care less what it was as long as it would work.

I had to remove one piece from the blower in order to use it as a vacuum and I did that according to the supplied instructions. Then I purchased two things... one was a 4" long piece of schedule 40 PVC pipe for $1.50 and a galvanized sheet metal adaptor for a 4" stove pipe (also $1.50).

On my blower there are two "nubs" inside the blower that locate the part that I had removed from the blower. The 4" piece of plastic pipe goes into that intake side so I had to put two notches into the plastic pipe in order to allow the pipe to seat into the blower. Your blower may be different. Then I simply put the sheet metal adaptor into the plastic pipe and slid both into the blower.

I did have to wrap several rounds of tape (in this case aluminized stove pipe tape) around the plastic pipe in order to get a snug fit for the pipe. I used the stove pipe tape 'cuz it's what I had laying around... you could use duct tape or masking tape or whatever you have around.

The first photo shows the pellet pipe adaptor... pretty simple.

The next photo is of the blower mounted to the vent pipe.

This one shows how it looks from a few feet away.

I took two pix of the crap blowing out of the blower but I didn't have the flash activated so they did not turn out. Suffice to say you don't want to be within 50 feet of the business end of the leaf blower when it's doing it's thing. I left the blower run for about 3 minutes.... after that little ash was coming from the blower and I shut it off.

The last photo is of the stove after the cleaning. You will see some ash around the perimeter of the fire pot but please note that I did not vacuum anything out of the stove prior to using the vac. I hadn't cleaned the stove for about 6 days so it really did do a good job of sucking out most of the ash from the stove. I did, however, dump the ash pan before I used the vac.

Here's a photo of the pellets I've been using in my stove since Dec. of last year... ESES's house brand called Uncle Jed's Cold Remedy. .... They also sell them in bulk and are called Canadian Mix when you buy in bulk.

Questions? Ask away. I am by no means an expert but thise deal with the leaf blower seems to do the trick to clean a stove in all of those hard to reach places.

Krooser is the one to thanks for starting the leaf blower trick. If he didn't pass on what he learned the rest of use would be stuck cleaning the pellet stove the old way.

 

[btuser]

Can you leave the leaf blower on? To help with the draft?

Seriously, does this help with all the maint on a pellet stove, or just the flue baffles/passages. I was under the impression you had to practically disassemble the entire pellet stove for propper maint.

 

[SmokeyTheBear]

Can you leave the leaf blower on? To help with the draft?

Seriously, does this help with all the maint on a pellet stove, or just the flue baffles/passages. I was under the impression you had to practically disassemble the entire pellet stove for propper maint.

Be our guest, just remember when a hot ember catches the blower on fire and that ignites your house we will disavow even having known you.

The blower just helps suck some of the fly ash out, you still need to loosen it up, which may mean removing parts of your stove. It is very good at removing loose fly ash.

 

[imacman]

....Seriously, does this help with all the maint on a pellet stove, or just the flue baffles/passages. I was under the impression you had to practically disassemble the entire pellet stove for propper maint.

Running a brush or LintEater up & down the pipes, plus banging on the metal walls of the firebox some with a hammer will loosen a lot of ash, and the blower just sucks it out...works great!

 

[mullet]

Krooser is the one to thanks for starting the leaf blower trick. If he didn't pass on what he learned the rest of use would be stuck cleaning the pellet stove the old way.

I totally agree, it just took me a while to find his post. I just tried to get as much data from everyone into 1 thread.

 

[joefraser]

Didn't get a picture of the leafblower in action but this is my set-up. As you can see the my neighbor's house is really close and we are on a major road. The cars pile up in front of the house as there is a light at the intersection. I attempted to blow towards the ground to keep ash to a minimum but there was quite a cloud of ash in the road at the beginning. I'll have to pick slow traffic days to do this.

I figured people were driving by wandering what in the world I was doing.

 

[krooser]

James... you're welcome... as I said before I learned this from my dealer who uses the blower to do cleaning on customer stoves. I thought WTF? when he told me how he cleaned it but I was amazed at the crud flying out of my stove after burning one ton and being totally clueless as to how to run a stove...

 

[IceNine]

Would retrofitting some sort of a burlap sack at the business end the leaf blower help keep the dust of black death to a minimum? I'm in the same boat as joefraser where the houses are close together.

 

[watrskir]

Would retrofitting some sort of a burlap sack at the business end the leaf blower help keep the dust of black death to a minimum? I'm in the same boat as joefraser where the houses are close together.

thats exactly what I did....put 3 pillow cases (each inside each other) and banded it on the exhaust end not to get the house dirty.....collected almost everything......oh ya..I wet the cloth also worked great

 

[ffspeed]

Thanks a lot for the pics. I have seen it posted more then once, talking about leaf blower on the stove pipe. I have been dying to ask what it was. Now I know, and didn't get laughed at for asking. Were those pic a little ex-stream. My neighbor is maybe 15 ft away.

 

[Sami]

Oh hell, in the Navy we would run walnut shells through the jet engines to clean the rotor blades. Me thinkith some pellets on the outboard side of the stove to scrape off the soot. Then I am going to adapt my 12 HP "Little Wonder" three wheeled leaf blower to the pipe just for Al Gore and the lady across the street with the white poddle hee hee hee..... so much for "cap and trade"

The guy that started this really might have something here.....

 

[sydney1963]

If my clean out T is inside and the end of the vent pipe is outside, can I make this work for my set up as well?

 

[imacman]

If my clean out T is inside and the end of the vent pipe is outside, can I make this work for my set up as well?

Yep Syd, after you brush out the pipe and clean the stove as usual, put the cap back on the T, go outside w/ a step ladder, and hook to the pipe.

 

[krooser]

hey Mac was right... he CAN peek into your window if he stands on his tippy-toes

 

[mullet]

HAHAH

 

[stallau]

It's a sunny but brisk day in Maine so lets climb a ladder and clean out the pipes after burning a little more than a ton for the season.

Enjoy and so much more fun than a brush

 

[Mr Fixit]

LOL you guys are nuts. With my luck, I would try that and destroy some little old ladie's laundry hanging on the line next door. I think I will stick with the shopvac method for now...

 

[save$]

Did the leaf blower cleaning again today. This is my 4th time. Got that black cloud for 2-3 minutes, then just a little gray. Tapped the stove pipes and opened and closed the stove during the process. It still amazes me how clean the stove is after this. Got a real hot fire after the cleaning. Shot a short movie of this, but not sure how to post to You Tube and then link it to this. Anyway, real pleased to have a simple method that does such a clean and easy stove cleaning.