Enviro Omega pot/liner removal

A lot of the crap is "clinker" that is comprised of all manner of non burnable junk.
(read this as sand/silica and anything that melts but does not burn)

Various pellet makers are very slack in what goes into the mix.

If they allow dirty bark and whatever crap happens to be lodged in it into the grinder and then mixed into the pellets you will get clinker.

We burn Bear Mt in the Quad, and the gal that lives in our downstairs buys the same stuff to burn in the Quad down there.

Every couple months I have to clean the crap out of the pot on that unit.

Nasty, hard, rock like junk that settles to the bottom of the pot.

I will assume this is the same sort of stuff you are getting, just that it sort of bonds to the fire pot.

The hotter the burn, the worse it gets.

 

The pot lasted a week before I had to clean the carbon off again. When I pulled the ash pan there was a lot of creosote. This is a result of burning Southern Indiana Hadwoods. I have burned these in three different stoves and they did this to each of the stoves. My sister burned just one bag in her stove and it got so caked up with creosote the exhaust blower was slowed down to the point of vacuum failure.

I tried a different cleaning method on the carbon this time. I used steam. I have a Shark steam cleaner I use to decrease engines and parts. The end result was the same, the time it took to clean was the same, about the only advantage was there wasn't as much dust being blown around so I'm not spitting carbon. It was alot messier. I will be tryin g something else next time. I think ill stick the liner in the oven at about 400* for a while then toss it in a bucket of water and see what happens.

I dont know how well you can see but the pics are of the.creosote.

 

Haha...I just did that yesterday...Had to get a piece out of my eye also!!

 

Oven cleaner?

 

When I worked at a adhesive plant there was a caustic tank there. We used to put stainless steel Sweco screens in it that to clean off the caked up adhesive. A few.hours and they come out better then new. That caustic tank is a solution of sodium hydroxide. Thats probably the main ingredient in oven cleaner. Worth a try but sodium hydroxide doesnt work too good unless its activated with heat. That caustic tank had a steam jacket that heated it. I suppose I could spray it and stick it in the oven but I have a feeling its just going to dry in there. It really needs to be submerged. Won't hurt to try, though.
Spending an hour to clean the liner is a bit more work then I anticipated. Overall I'm spending a solid hour and forty five minutes to clean once a week. Not having to dump the burn pot daily and load the hopper daily is nice but trimming down the cleaning time would be even better. I had to load hopper and dump pot daily with the Cumberland, but I only had to clean after about 3 weeks and that was just a 20 minute job. If I can shave down the Omega cleaning to half hour...im golden.

I also meant to coat the liner with graphite paste but I just kind of spaced that out. I'll have to try to remember that next week.

 

A guy I work with suggests a needle peener and I have one. I'll give that a shot too. I read a post on the other forum where a guy heated it with a propane or map gas torch and shoved it in a bucket of water. He said it pops right off so I'll be trying that too.

I see harbor freight carries those sonic cleaners. I wonder if they are any good. I'm Leary of buy electrical stuff from HF.

 

MEK. Carb cleaner.