When in doubt, clean..clean..clean...

Loaded up with 4 tons of Sets for the beginning of the season. Will burn three in the house and one for the shed. The Quadrafire Castile got a new auger motor (easy to install - I could hear it was going...) in December, but the stove has been burning lousy, (long wavy flame and black soot) even when a complete inside stove clean and a stove pipe clean with a vent brush on the end of an electric drill. And, I have been having problems with the vacuum switch. Been blowing out the tube (NOT into the switch) and tapping the switch lightly, to shake out fines.
So I attempted another pipe clean yesterday and got my brush jammed in the pipe. URGH!!! With no way to remove it, I was forced to remove the stovepipe, which goes from the back of the stove, up 3 feet with a 45 degree elbow into the chimney, which is in the wall directly behind the stove.
It has been a dozen years since I did the installation and have not removed the pipe. In the thimble going from the end of the pipe into the chimney, I found it 20-25% filled with ash. Still a lot of breathing space for the stove into the chimney, I nevertheless, disposed of this ash. When I removed the clean out from the bottom of the pipe, which comes directly out of the stove, I had more ash sitting there, inside the stove. After cleaning this out, I completely cleaned out all the inside of the stovepipe and applied new high temp silicon and re-installed the pipe. (WD-40 works great on removing old high temp silicon... soak and leave on for 15 minutes. I removed the old silicon, scraping it off with my pocked knife. I also cleaned the areas to be applied with new silicon with mineral spirits, as recommended on product label.)
Wow! Stove runs just like the first day I fired it up. I will not wait again to do this kind of EXTREMELY deep cleaning, the next time I sense the flame "not right." (Should get many years before a revisit, as I burn Sets exclusively now.)
Am watching the fines carefully, as I load pellets into the stove. I do not pre-sift the pellets before loading them into the stove. Somersets usually have low fines. I do dump my pellets into a pale and avoid most of the fines which sink to the bottom as I hand stir the pale, and are discarded when collected at the bottom. As the stove was installed Christmas 2008, I may just replace the vacuum switch and hose, not expensive and easy to do.
I also did an examination of the tadpole gasket on the stove door, which I replaced last year, and surprise, it seems to be failing. I notice soot in the corner of the glass, where there is probably an air leak, which might be part of the vacuum switch issue. Replacing that today and will then monitor the vacuum switch and see if it continues its chronic ways.

Never have replaced any of the the snap disks. Any idea on their life expectancy?

Replaced the igniter and the convection motor three years ago. Almost have a completely rebuilt stove.
So when in doubt, clean, clean, clean.

 

Toss a coin on life expectancy of the snap discs. And a clean stove, is a happy stove. Stay warm. kap

 

Fines burn great in my stoves...

 

Rocks too??

 

Haven't tried those but maybe I will...

 

I burned the original Inferno's one time....that was like burning rocks for heat.