Howdy folks, Strange days....the calendar says spring is right around the corner but the thermometer says otherwise. In any event, I was hoping some folks could chime in as to whether they have done a "cleanout" burn in their Ideal Steel. Over time, a large amount of black crud as accumulated on the firebrick. The plan was to clean the stove, remove the cat, build a fire and let it rip, much like an EPA tube stove. I have three temp gauges on it and would of course modulate air flow to prevent overheating. Useful, waste of time, safe, dangerous????? Please let me know, thanks.
I would still leave the cat in. Just build some smaller hotter fires that burn out when you need a little heat. It may take a few but it should eventually clean up. I have gone to a once a day loading with the warmer temps rather than a smoldering daytime load. I just shut the air closed and pipe damper closed in the morning to save the coals. I'll have coals that revive once I open the air and damper wide open that evening. I am heating from the basement so I can naturally run a hotter fire so I think that helps. But in your situation if you actually needed heat to warm the house a hotter fire won't cook you out.
If you toss in some creosote treatment onto a hot coal bed and leave the cat bypassed for an hour or two, it will treat the buildup in the firebox as well as the pipe and chimney. Use a cat safe product though. A couple hot small fires with cool downs in between, and it mostly burns off or flakes off.
Get 2 to 3 pine 2x4s Build a nice log cabin type fire in it. Engage the cat but don't lower the air setting all the way. You will burn off everything like that. Sweep the chimney after and then go to town inside the stove with an ash vac after it cools.
No chemicals. This is a cat stove! Bypassing is not enough protection and no chemicals are “cat safe” enough. Wood only!
I was told when I picked up my stove at Woodstock to use newspaper with no color as the colors have chemicals that react with the coating in the combustor.
I don't mean to jump into the middle of an argument, but particles in the woodsmoke are supposed to react with the combustor coating, that is the purpose of the catalyst. As to newspaper with colors, do you mean no ink at all?? Or none of the glossy ad papers which burn for crap anyway?? Most all colored inks do have metal pigments in them IIRC, and it can be seen when burning, that is what produces diff color flames. I can't imagine it does the cat any favors, but I don't know that it would be extremely detrimental either. (as in catastrophic to the catalyst coating) I do not know if there are any 'cat friendly' creosote treatments out there that would be completely OK with the cat. I don't believe that I will take the chance. I would just do as others mentioned, run a good HOT fire, and clean from there after cooldown. Chaz edit.. Just sitting here thinking, I could fill many books with the stuff that I don't know. If only I knew which unknowns to include.
There are a lot of chemicals out there, including many in the wood we burn. They won’t all degrade the coating on a catalyst. If you are developing a product for use in cat stoves it is easy to avoid anything that will hurt the cat. If you are making colorful inks for printing ads, you probably don’t know or care about cat stoves. Cats seem to be lasting people 2-4 years. Mine has 2 years on it and is still going strong so I am pretty sure the stuff I put in hasn’t melted it yet. YMMV.
At the Woodstock picnic one year there was a used Progress all apart so you could see the guts, I asked the technician what the deal was, he said the owner took the cat out and fired it up. Result was it warped something inside. My dad used to floor the Studebaker Hawk to clean it out. I don't think it did anything.
Yes, you definitely don’t want to get it too hot too fast. Rapid heating means uneven expansion which can result in warping or breakages.
Well then, there goes that idea. Old saying, "If it ain't broke, don't fix it". Once winter decides to get the bleep out of here (11" forecast for NJ tonight), it's time to do a deep clean, replace some gaskets and tune up the lawn tractor.
