In loving memory of Kenis D. Keathley 6/4/81 - 3/27/22 Loving father, husband, brother, friend and firewood hoarder Rest in peace, Dexterday

Maintenance that gets overlooked

Discussion in 'Pellet Stoves, Pellet Fireplaces, Pellet Furnaces' started by Snowy Rivers, Apr 21, 2022.

  1. Snowy Rivers

    Snowy Rivers

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    All of us take care of our pellet stoves with great care..
    One piece of equipment that likely gets forgotten THE REFRIGERATOR....

    This bad boy is always nice and cold and keeps the food and drinks at the ready for us always.

    The frost free units we have now take care of the job of thawing out the unit.
    Yup....BUTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTT....Mostly overlooked and very much out of sight.....
    The condenser unit that is under the unit down just above the floor.

    There is a small fan in the back that pulls room air through the condenser grid and then across the water drain pan (Catches the water after the unit thaws the evaporator) the water dries up as the air blows over the area.....

    The air then blows out the back panel and into the room.....

    Under the front valance panel (Usually slips off of some studs with a gentle pull)

    The condenser is a grid of tubes and little metal rods and it perfect for catching DUST BUGGIES, CAT AND DOG HAIR AND GAWD KNOWS WHAT ELSE.....

    Our fridge/freezer seemed to be running more lately.....This morning I slipped the lower valance off and took a peek with a flash light...OMG...ONE BIG AZZ FURBALL IN THERE.

    Sadly there is not an easy way to clear the crud out....

    I have used a can of computer duster.....TOO SMALL....YA NEED A BIG BLAST TO CLEAR OUT THE JUNK.

    I headed down to the shop and hooked up the compressor and connected the hose.

    Ran the hose up over the railing and into the kitchen.....

    Now there is the huge azz mess to deal with.
    I got the fridge out of its hole and vacuumed the floor well....Grabbed an old beach towel and dampened it a bit...

    Laid the towel over the area at the floor where the valance goes to HOPEFULLY catch all the crap that is gonna fly out.....

    Crawled in behind the fridge and removed the hardboard cover at the floor level....

    Inside is the compressor, rear portion of the condenser, the fan and it's partition from the outlet passage...

    Grabbed the air nozzle and let fly with a blast covering the condenser unit well..

    Yeah buddy.....AND THE CHIT FLEW.....The wet towel caught most of it....
    I flipped on the fan in the furnace/AC air handler to remove any dust that did get loose.

    A good look into the condenser revealed CLEAN TUBES.....

    Reassembled the rear cover and cleaned up the remaining dust on the floor and such.

    Plugged the unit in and it went right to work....

    Within a few minutes I could feel warm air coming up from behind/along side the fridge.
    The area along side the fridge is always a great place to slip folded up shopping bags
    DON'T TO THIS...IT KEEPS AIR FROM FLOWING IN AND AROUND THE FRIDGE

    We headed out to breakfast at 10am and back by 11:30 am....Fridge shut off and sitting quietly....

    A dirty condenser can run the unit a lot longer than need be.....More costly$$$$$$$$ and puts more strain on the compressor..

    And you never know what you will find under that fridge....Yeah buddy.....


    Not a hard job.....but it is a job that gets over looked......
     
    Last edited: Apr 21, 2022
  2. chris

    chris

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    do that 3 or more times a year, might want to clean out under your stove if it's not a built in.
     
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  3. Snowy Rivers

    Snowy Rivers

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    The crap under the stove can get down right nasty.....
    The junk under the stove is not likely to hurt anything.....maybe a place for critters to hide....

    We have a built in cook top and built in oven
     
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  4. bogieb

    bogieb

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    I clean out from under the fridge several times a year. What with all the cat hair from 3 cats, stray feathers and dander from 2 birds, dust from pellets, generally being an older house with no central air cleaning system, and being right next to the most used exterior door in the house, it gets quite dirty. I'll use a piece of coat hangar wire to pull out stuff from further underneath that the crevice tool doesn't reach.

    I don't use my cook stove. I'm sure it is quite dirty under there but I just do a basic cleaning with the crevice tool. No, it doesn't clean far under there, but out of sight, out of mind.
     
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  5. Snowy Rivers

    Snowy Rivers

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    Having pets and heating with an appliance that burns a fuel that leaves ash is the biggy....

    We also live on 45 acres, have horses that stir up dust in the outdoor paddocks in the summer, a dusty driveway in the summer too.

    Two pellet stoves that run all winter do a great job of stirring up plenty of ash...
    The Kitty is nearly hairless....so she is not a big contributor to the mess...

    The central AC does remove a lot of the junk in the summer....it has an electrostatic filter....but the junk is still an issue.

    We come in from outside into the kitchen....Drop our shoes on the vinyl floor under the island .....Always needles and stuff getting tracked in.....Country living is nice....but ya learn to live with what nature provides in abundance.....DIRT
     
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  6. jtakeman

    jtakeman Moderator

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    Complements of my Buddy the Stove Doc,

     
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  7. bogieb

    bogieb

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    I cleaned a P68 for a friend a couple of winters ago. He was talking about how poorly it heated their house and how it was making noises, so I offered to take a look. OMG, the cat hair I sucked out of distribution fan was nuts - I couldn't believe it was actually still running. It was packed in so tightly that I couldn't get it all and told him he would need to take it off when it got warmer and do a proper job. He said he had just cleaned the stove a couple of weeks before, but I can tell you that the exhaust looked like it had NEVER been touched and the insides were pretty groady too. I think he thought that emptying the ash bucket was "cleaning". Unfortunately his wife had a medical emergency during my visit, so I couldn't teach him how to properly take care of it (yeah, after guiding in the ambulance to their place on an old country road, I stayed and cleaned the stove, and locked up after myself when I left)

    He gushed about how much better it ran and how much heat output there was after I got done.
     
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  8. don2222

    don2222

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    Nice Job Snowy!
    You must have a big compressor? What kind is it?
    I just bought a Quincy 7.5 HP 80 gallon 2 stage reciprocating piston that weighs in @ 720 lbs.
    Also on the Clothes dryer, even though we clean the lint screen, a compressor blow out in the screen compartment and sucking it up with a shop vac sure helps a lot too!
     

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  9. don2222

    don2222

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    Snowy
    Do you use your compressor on your pellet stoves?
    It can be an easy quick way to clean up those nasty old dirty exhaust blowers by using white aluminum oxide in a little blasting cabinet?
     

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    Last edited: May 7, 2022