Coalpail.com Forum

This coming winter will be our second season running our Hyfire II. Unfortunately, my husband never cleaned out the stove once it was shut down in the spring (no matter how much nagging I did) . What do we need to do or check before staring the stove up when it's time, besides clean it out? I don't see any rust, but what else should we look for?

Apparently you did not nag enough !
Look for any creature hiding in there.

And as long as you don't tell the stove, you'll be ok. Fire it right up

CLEAN IT OUT! Vacuum on and around the grates, make sure the combustion holes are clean, check for fines under the pusher plate, remove it is the best way.

I would oil the motors, Make sure all the motors are working.

Make sure your Exahust pipe is Clean! Ash will build up in it over the season.

Check all your gaskets. Etc....

Read the section on Spring Maintenance....

What WNY said. Seriously, I didn't do anything to my stove for 3 years because I didn't find the forum until then. I would check for fly ash in any horizontal black pipes when I'm vacuuming the stove out but I wouldn't worry too much about anything else - like painting or rust control - for now. Be sure to use a "dry wall dust" vaccum bag when you vacuum; if not the ash will go every where. Lisa

Thanks for the replies! One more question - with our wood stove, we needed a new gasket every year. With coal stoves, would it be the same? How would we tell if we needed new gasket(s)? Would it be better to just replace the gasket(s) yearly and be done with it? (I don't know how many there are on the Hyfire... one, two?)

I know what we'll be doing this weekend, LOL... we already received our delivery of coal, so once the stove is checked out and cleaned, we'll be good to go.

Your typical wood/coal or wood only stove, usually goes through many cycles of open/close to load the wood/nut coal, on a stoker type stove, it's rare that you need to open the door, once you fire up and the cold season starts, so a gasket should last a lot longer on a stoker stove.

One thing to keep in mind while replacing a gasket, is to keep the gasket cement to a minimum, if you get the proper diameter gasket rope, and have the channel in the cast iron cleaned, you are most likely not going to need any cement. and you'll have a good seal every time.

I think I replaced the original one on the door of my Hyfire I, the stove is around 1995 vintage, didn't look like they had ever been replaced. I also replaced the Grate gaskets and rear stoker plate gaskets since I was doing it. if you don't have them falling apart or off the door, leave them alone.

Someone in an earlier posting advised that your gasket needed to be replaced if it failed the "dollar" test. Take a dollar and close the stove door on it. If the dollar can be pulled out with little or no effort, the gasket needs to be replaced. If it holds fast, the gasket is good. Works for me; even though I changed gaskets in the spring my stove loading door recently failed the dollar test so I'll be replacing the gasket - again- before I light the match. The strange thing is that I knew in my heart that the new gasket wasn't quite right when I put it on. I put the same gasket - same package and everything - on the ash door and it passes the dollar test. Go figure. Lisa

Thanks again for the replies, and for the dollar bill tip too. I'll try that.

Dave, did you get your boiler done over the summer?

Connie