Mid-Season Maintenance

titleist1 · Post by **titleist1** » Mon. Jan. 07, 2008 1:55 pm

Another opportunity for Late-Mid Season Maintenance.....59*F today....more of the same tomorrow and Wednesday!! Let the stove burn out yesterday, I think the furnace kicked on maybe twice through the night. At this rate, I'll have to get the lawn mower out and start cutting grass soon!

Devil505 · Post by **Devil505** » Mon. Jan. 07, 2008 2:39 pm

56* outside right now. Supposed to hit 60* tomorrow! (got a few windows open & the stove as low as I dare)

smith10210 · Post by **smith10210** » Mon. Jan. 07, 2008 3:06 pm

55* here today 60* tomorrow. I shut my stove down today and cleaned my chimney and the inside of the stove. Only got like a half a coffee can of ash from cleaning my chimney wasn't to bad and put a new gasket on my window. I'm planning on leaving it off until wed because it's going in the 30*'s again and plus my wife is already complaining it's cold in the house it's frigging 68*

..

av8r · Post by **av8r** » Mon. Jan. 07, 2008 3:51 pm

supposedly it hit 60 here today. Maybe warmer tomorrow. I'm leaving it idle. We'll see how warm it is when I get home.

CoalHeat · Post by **CoalHeat** » Mon. Jan. 07, 2008 6:09 pm

I loaded the stove this morning, but it's running at 1/2 turn on the draft vent. I'm not going to add any coal because of the forcasted high of 62 for tomorrow. So I'll restart it when winter returns.

av8r · Post by **av8r** » Mon. Jan. 07, 2008 8:39 pm

av8r wrote:supposedly it hit 60 here today. Maybe warmer tomorrow. I'm leaving it idle. We'll see how warm it is when I get home.

heehee...main room was 76 when I got home...wooooooo....a little bit toasty...opened a window and a door...nice!

europachris · Post by **europachris** » Mon. Jan. 07, 2008 8:49 pm

It was in the 60's here today, and get this - we had a TORNADO touch down today just a few miles from our house. WTF!!!?!?!? This is JANUARY 7th!!! Quite a bit of damage to several homes, etc. The track went through a pretty long area of N. Central IL and up into SE Wisconsin. Crazy, man, just crazy!

CoalHeat · Post by **CoalHeat** » Sat. Feb. 16, 2008 11:26 pm

Today I noticed the fire in the Harman was getting lazy, but I chose to ignore it, as I was involved in other tasks. By the evening it was going out, just some red coal in one corner, so I dumped the fire at 9 PM and emptied it out. I removed the cap on the lower tee and found it about half full of fly ash. While vacuuming it out I noticed it was a little red ash on top from the Superior coal, but almost all gray ash with little pieces of unburnt coal in it.
Anyway, I'm still bringing the fire back up, the draft is much better since the cleaning, but not what I had wanted to do on a Saturday night.

CoalHeat · Post by **CoalHeat** » Sat. Dec. 27, 2008 11:25 am

I cleaned out the pipes on the Harman yesterday, the lower tee was about 1/2 full of flyash, nice to have the tee and the cleanout cap on it. The stove is back to long burns and an even fire again.

Cleaning out the flyash on a hand fed is important and should be done regularly, esp. on the Harman Mark series stoves, behind the baffle plate and in the lower part of the pipe accumulates lots of fly ash.

Post by **Rob R.** » Sat. Dec. 27, 2008 11:32 am

I had the same thought, letting the stove go out today so I can vacuum everything out. I have burned about 5500 lbs through it since lighting it in the fall.

gambler · Post by **gambler** » Sat. Dec. 27, 2008 11:40 am

I cleaned out my stove collar area on my top vent stove last week because I was having some slight moisture and faint CO issues. More ash in there than there was running all year last year. I think I will put an access port on my stove pipe and vac this area every month. Hate to shut down and remove the stove pipe for a 20 sec vac job.

JGWalk · Post by **JGWalk** » Sat. Dec. 27, 2008 6:54 pm

With temps in the mid 40's and a new shop vac (Christmas present) I decided to shut down and clean out my stove. Coal berner suggested I move my baro from the top of my stove to a position higher up the pipe run. Since I had everything cool I decided to move the baro up 3 feet. Does any know if this will affect my draft setting? My installer said the baro should be right on the stove outlet and set the draft. I just wanted to make sure moving the baro will not affect the stove's performance.
Thanks, John

GettingStoked · Post by **GettingStoked** » Sun. Dec. 28, 2008 8:52 am

It was a good day yesterday to clean out the stove for sure... It was around 47* when I started mine... took about 1 hour, that includes blowing out the hepa filter on my shopvac once it got clogged. Here's a pic of my horizontal pipe going into the chimney.
<removed dead image link>

CoalHeat · Post by **CoalHeat** » Sun. Dec. 28, 2008 8:55 am

That's why maintenance is important. Bet the stove drafts better now. My Harman is still burning with the air inlet 1/2 turn open.

Devil505 · Post by **Devil505** » Sun. Dec. 28, 2008 9:05 am

GettingStoked wrote:It was a good day yesterday to clean out the stove for sure.

Wow!!...Is that all from this Fall/Winter so far? If so, what coal are you burning? (I typically have just a light coating of fly ash through my horizontal pipes)