What I found when cleaning baffles (pics)

[jatoxico]

This is a follow up to my earlier post about getting ready for the upcoming season. This is what I found when I pulled the right hand baffle on my Jotul 550. This formed above the baffle. Was definitely messing up the flow of air. The rest was of the unit and the chimney was not too bad according to the sweep that did the job.

Oh and a few pics of my new wood shed so maybe I won't have this problem again!

Have to get used to burning hotter though.

 

[corey21]

No wonder you were having air flow problems.

Nice wood shed.

 

[My Oslo heats my home]

Nice shed

 

[SmokeyCity]

wow - you are making your own coal!

 

[Swedishchef]

Indeed that looks like coal! Wowsers...I can't even remove my baffles to see if I have anything that resembles that!

Andrew

 

[freddypd]

How do those roof panels hold up? I saw them at the big box store and they felt a little flimsly.

 

[EatenByLimestone]

Holy crap you found a cell phone in your woodstove!


Matt

 

[maverick06]

how the heck did you get that material into the baffle? I pulled mine with great suffering about 3 years in, and found nothing bur some fine powder, so not i just blow it out with compressed air.

jeez...

 

[jatoxico]

wow - you are making your own coal!

That made me laugh! It didn't take that long to happen either, word to the wise...

 

[jatoxico]

how the heck did you get that material into the baffle? I pulled mine with great suffering about 3 years in, and found nothing bur some fine powder, so not i just blow it out with compressed air.

jeez...

The unit has cast baffles fitted with fiber "bricks". I had the bricks out several times over the season since it allows good view of the flue and top plate of the unit and found only fine brown powder.

I took the entire baffle system down (cast baffles, bricks and burn tubes) to have the chimney swept and thats when I found the mess in the pic was obstructing removal of the bricks that I had previously been able to easily slide out of the way. So this must have started to form at some point on the cast iron and once air flow was obstructed, things went downhill fast.

I started to use Anti Creo-Soot towards the end of the season as preventative maintenance now I wonder if using that product that was part of the problem. I wasn't seeing any issues before that.

 

[jatoxico]

How do those roof panels hold up? I saw them at the big box store and they felt a little flimsly.

Well I'll let you know , but I ran 1x4" about every 16" and the rafters are 16 on center too so spans are not too big. They are thin though. I wanted to use exposed fastener metal roofing but could not find a local supplier and no one on the net would ship such a small job cheap enough to make it worth it.