I my cat is in need of some attention. The stove burns 24/7. My wife watches the great grandson during the week. She gets up before me to feed the stove. How do you do it? Not the cleaning part, but getting it out. Talking about an AS here. Open the lid during a burn and pull the CAT for cleaning using my stove gloves?
Marshel54 I don't have a cat stove so can't offer you any advice on performing maintenance, but I do know that a functioning cat will burn through any gloves you are using before you even have any idea what happened. Let the stove cool. ,
Stove has to cool down to warm before you pull a cat. The older ceramic cats were very fragile in that department. The newer steel not so much but you don’t wanna pull a hot cat,,,,ever.
Borrow a bunch of electric heaters (I like the oil filled radiators) from some friends and plug them in around the house. As your stove is cooling off turn them on. This may raise your electric bill a bit but you won't end up with a cold house and a visit to the ER. Good time to sweep the chimney and all that.
I let the stove burn over night, when I get up in the morning- before I load it up if its time to give the catalyst a once over I put it over to bypass- by this point the stove top temp is somewhere under 200... with gloves I open the lid, pull the cat out, brush it off with a clean paint brush I keep near by- then I take it to the garage and use a little blower to get any remaining dust or ash or debris out of it. Not sure what the correct terminology for it is. 175-200 I wouldn't be in a hurry to grab it with my bare hands for sure, but with a glove on its no problem. I elect to use the blower rather than a vacuum because I don't let it cool all the way down to room temp so I don't want to have anything crazy happen like light my vacuum on fire. I'm aware of how unlikely that is while I'm typing it- but nonetheless, that's how I do it.
Marshal, I bought a spare for just that purpose, when the fires died down, lift lid with gloves pull out and drop back in. Leave bypass open and burn like regular stove
This is the best idea in my opinion. Ours is a Fireview and the cat is very easy to get at. Once the stove has burned down to just coals/embers, lift the lid and swap out cats. Takes only a minute and this method also gives you time to inspect the cat, clean or wash (we do the vinegar treatment annually) and have it ready for the next swap.
Good idea. I called Woodstock today and ordered a new CAT. Kind of pricey, but figured it would facilitate the cleaning and I would eventually need a new one anyway. Buy at today's price instead of 3 or 4 years down the road.
What I always do is either before my morning or evening reload I will pull the cat when the stove is down around 200F or lower. Then I let it sit on my hearth for 5 minutes to cool down before cleaning. Speaking of which, I need to do that tomorrow morning.
Mine is a Buck 80. It has to be stone cold and void of ash in order to service the catalyst. It's mounted in a cast iron fixture bolted to the top front of the fire box. It requires a gasket around the catalyst and a second gasket between the cast iron fixture and the roof of the fire box. It's a b×@%h to deal with. Mine gets a vinegar bath just after the burn season, plus I have a second that I rotate each year. This means the fresh cleaned catalyst does not get put back in for a year.
