Process Essay

Yeah, yeah, yeah, the gas and heating oil prices are falling back again. Don’t tell me I wasted money on a pellet stove though, as soon as OPEC cuts production prices will jump right back up again. Besides, I get a nice, warm, glowing fire lighting up my newly remodeled living room. This makes a perfect place for the wife and I to relax on the weekends once the kids are in bed. But man, that glass is developing a brown film on it already, I just cleaned the thing two days ago and it looks like I’ll be doing it again tomorrow. A quick clean doesn’t get too involved but I haven’t done that for nearly a week and a half so in the morning I’ll get down and dirty and give the stove a good clean. It is best to do this in a few stages starting with the burn pot (where the fire is), then getting all the ash off the heat exchangers, and finally cleaning around the combustion fan and the ash pan.

Stage one of the big clean starts inside the stoves burn pot. This is where the fire actually burns and heats up the heat exchangers overhead. My particular stove is a Harman and works differently than most other manufacturer’s models. My pellets feed in from the bottom and as they burn the ash gets pushed up a ramp in the burn pot until it finally falls off the edge and into a large ash pan bellow. Harman’s are the only company that uses this system because of a little thing called a Patent. They are much cleaner and more efficient than the competitors design but still require routine cleaning. I start off buy scraping all the ash up and out and exposing the carbon or ‘mineral’ build up that collects on the walls and floor of the burn pot. That build up has to go because it can interfere with the feeding and eventually cause the flame to smother itself out. For this removal process I use an old flat blade screw driver and scrape the whole thing down loosening all the solid chunks and then knocking them down in the ash pan. This stage is essential because carbon build up will also prevent the stove from igniting itself if it is all blocked up. The burn pot is the main area of focus because if it is dirty, the stove will not run.

So with the burn pot clean I can now move onto the second stage, cleaning the heat exchangers. As the fire burn it throws a lot of fly ash around which collects on the heat exchangers on the top of the fire box and behind the fire wall. This is when I haul out grandma’s old vacuum cleaner to catch all the fine ash particles that come floating down from above. You’ll want to use a vacuum that uses bags for this, if you use a shop vac., the filter will be constantly plugged by the fine ash. The tool that works the best for this stage is an old paint brush along with the vacuum. While holding the tip of the vacuum nozzle inside the stove use the old brush to sweep the fine ash that clings to the surface away. The ash will slowly drift downward and with the vacuum there it can’t get out into the room. Once the top is clean the back guards need to be removed to clean behind them also. My stove has a cast iron panel with a brick pattern that needs to come out. Behind that are four sheet metal plates that all need to be removed to access the rear heat exchangers. They are easy to take out and now the rear exchangers are in full view. Use the trusty old paint brush and vacuum to clean them the same way as the top exchangers. Once they are clean the sheet metal plates can go back in along with the brick panel and that’s it for cleaning the fire box area.

Now the top part of the stove is complete, the fire will burn well and there is no ash to block the smoke and fumes exit. Stage three is when thing get a little dirty, rooting around in the ash pan and whatever lurks behind it. I open the side doors on the stove to get at the ash pan locks, there is an air tight seal between the ash pan and the combustion motor so the locks tend to be a little rugged to unlatch. Once it’s unlocked the pan needs to come out. Keep the vacuum handy because the ash pan will drag all kinds of ash out with it once it is removed. Clean the back side of the pan off before you go anywhere with it or else there will be ashes everywhere. Sometimes there is almost an inch of ash built up back there, and that all has to go. With the pan off I can now access the combustion motor fan, which also likes to collect ash on it. To get at the fan a small guard has to be removed, just slide the guard lock up, pull the guard to the left and out it comes. Take the old paint brush to the fan and then suck up anything that comes out of it. After that is clean put the fan guard back in and presto! All done with the stove clean up.

That’s it, plain and simple plus not all that time consuming. With this regular maintenance the stove should function flawlessly all winter long. The wife and I can sit comfortably by the fire on those cold winter nights and in the back of my mind I’ll know I’m saving some cash no matter what those OPEC folks do. And by the way, that brown film on the glass comes right off with a little Windex and some elbow grease.