Well today I went to my stove shop where I purchased my stove to listen to some industry reps talk about cleaning the pellet stoves. They were techs for avalon and cumberland. They actually cleaned the same model stove I have which was really insightful. They were trying to sell the ash vacs mainly. I was shocked to see how much Per Ton cleaning is necessary. They took both motors out and showed how to clean as well as the rest of the important parts. It was nice to see how a professional cleans the stove. What troubles me is how obvious they make it look that without an ash vac it is impossible to clean. They were offering 10% the the $249.50 price tag of the vac. Its just hard to spend that kind of money when so many people have told me that a decent shop vac with a fine filtration filter will work fine provided there are no hot embers. Well all and all it was very interesting and the free lunch was pretty good to.