Its Warm Out: Mid Season Maintainence

got a good rippin wood fire goin last night so I could shut the stove down today and do a mid season maintainence. I also burn wood, and probably overkill cleaning my chimney (bout twice a year between creosote and fly ash) but responding to so many chimney fires with the fire department; its good insurance. I shut her completly down and took apart the black flue pipe. cleaned that out with the brush. I then cleaned the chimney out and between the flue pipe and chimney probably got a third of a 5 gallon bucket of fly ash and creosote. much to my suprise I did not find a lot of fly ash. I then went to the stove. took all the firebrick out and replaced 3 pieces due to cracks. replaced a shaker grate also. I already seasoned it in the oven, then I built a small kindling and slab wood fire. let that die down and now got a 3/4 load of wood in her. anyone else take advantage of the weather? how did it go?

did a quick vacuum in /around the ash pan area and into the pipe, checked the horizontal pipe, about a half inch of ash, vaccumed that out too. the stoves are just ilding, burning very little the last couple days!!

I also took advantage of the warm weather on Saturday to shut down and clean my stove. Amazingly I put the last load of coal on the fire Friday night and it took almost 24 hours before it died down enough to empty it and let it cool. After it was dead cold I did a complete vacuum and inspection. I have a few cracked bricks but none on hand as replacements. I will be going out tomorrow and purchasing enough to do the whole stove if necessary. I did talk to my local stove guy about the cracked bricks and he said not to worry unless they fall out of the track. Anyway I needed to get fired back up again so I will forgo the brick replacement in favor of heat until the next warm up.

Since I have only been burning since the end of December and am a newbie by definition it really gave me a chance to go over the stove with a greater understanding of how it burns and what is going on in the firebox. I took a very close look at the grates and how the unit is constructed and now when I poke at the dead spots and shake down the ashes it will be easier to understand the mechanics.

About an hour ago I took some pictures of the ongoing burn. The first is straight out of the camera and the second was after PhotoShop ran AutoLevels.

John