With winter getting close to the end( finally) I'm thinking what I need to do to my firewood set-up. I'll clean the chimney, clean the stove, including glass, and pull the CAT and soak it in white vinegar and distilled water and replace w/new gaskets. I'll finish cutting those big oak rounds I got from the blow down and get them busted and packed then clean my splitter. I'll change the hydro filter, engine oil and grease when next years cutting season starts. What does everybody else do?
We had 80 on Wednesday then about 2" of snow yesterday. It's supposed to be mid-60's thru the weekend then a high of low 30's early week here. It's March......
I'll be burning for a couple more months. The only things I do for the off season are sweep my liner and put a screen around the cap to keep bats & birds out (if I remember).
I do a midwinter ‘combat cleaning’ of my stove & upper chimney. It’s usually on a warmer set of days in January, then I’m good until summer. I can tell by the ‘draw’ when it’s time to fit it in. I will make a fire into early May at times. It’s a good time to burn up substandard firewood.
Much too early to think about shutdown. Still have three months to go! One thing I see missed is that before summer shutdown I burn some short hot kindling fires to convert all of the gooey tar like firebox deposits into dry flakey stuff so I can clean the whole thing down to bare metal. That creo goo is corrosive and I don't want it chilling out all summer when humidity levels are up.
The only thing I've done thus far that signals the season is winding down is bring in more dedicated shoulder wood to fill the racks rather than the higher BTU stuff. This year that happens to be sassafras, which is perfect for shorter duration fires. Typically I end up having a couple sporadic fires into early May before it's finally time to stop burning and put the AC window units in. That transition usually happens fast. When that time comes, I don't do much other than clean the bulk of the ash from the stove. All of my fall burning prep I do in September: check and sweep the chimney, then give the stove a good once-over. Last fall I put 1/2" square hardware cloth around the chimney cap which will most definitely keep the birds from taking up residence in there over the summer like in previous years.
That's a great idea. I like to leave it clean as possible to keep the wood smoke smell down in the summer and I guess it's good for the steel to get that corrosive residue off?
Turns out, since the bricks cover the metal from smoke exposure no creo accumulates behind the bricks so no need to pull them. I pulled the bricks once to replace a bunch and the metal beneath was clean. The bricks themselves don't accumulate creo either so maybe they get hot enough to burn off tar all around? I don't know but no need to remove them to clean creo. Some ash does get behind them though.
I've never pulled my bricks either. I'll usually get the bulk of ash out then I have a ash vacuum that I'll finish that job with. Cleaning the glass is my most unfavorite part. The side glass on my Buck 91 gets dirty as soon as I light the fire seems like. I usually have to use a sticker scraper to clean them with before the over cleaner I use.
