Cleaning a coal stoker vs a pellet stove.

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homeskillet
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Post by homeskillet » Tue. Jan. 30, 2018 5:55 pm

Questions about maintaining a stoker DURING the winter season. I have to shutdown my pellet stove once or twice a week to vac ash out of it, empty ash pan and clean burn pot because clinkers form in it and inhabit air flow thru burn pot. Generally speaking, How often will I have to shutdown a stoker to tend to it? Do hard, encrusted clinkers ever for on the burner? Can i change the ash pan with the stove running? Thanks for all your input

 
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freetown fred
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Post by freetown fred » Tue. Jan. 30, 2018 6:26 pm

You get clinkers in a pellet stove?? Yes, you can empty ash pan while it's running. Best to have a spare.

 
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nepacoal
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Post by nepacoal » Tue. Jan. 30, 2018 6:41 pm

Depending on how much coal you burn, you may have to shut down once during the heating season to clean the fly ash out of the stove pipe and brush down the inside of the stove. After burning 1.5 to 2 tons would be a good time to check it until you get a feel for your setup. Then at the end of the season it will need a thorough cleaning to prep it for summer hibernation.


 
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WNY
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Post by WNY » Tue. Jan. 30, 2018 7:44 pm

I usually clean mine about once or twice a season, depending, i can vacuum it out on the bottom into the vent pipe pretty quick while ti's running (well idling). my TEE before the chimney I can see how much ash is built up, usually not too bad for an entire season. I run 2 stoves 24/7 from Nov. thru Mar/Apr. depending on the temps. Unless we have a power outage or something, then before startup, I'll clean it out.

 
homeskillet
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Post by homeskillet » Tue. Jan. 30, 2018 8:57 pm

freetown fred wrote:
Tue. Jan. 30, 2018 6:26 pm
You get clinkers in a pellet stove?? Yes, you can empty ash pan while it's running. Best to have a spare.
I call them clinkers...........chunks of unburnable "whatever" that clog up the firebox. The only way to clean them out of a pellet stove fire box is to shut the stove down and scrape fire box clean. I would think if a coal stove got clinkers, you would have to shut stove down and scrape the burner, but many people report running a coal stove 24/7 for months at a time. Hence the question.....do coal stoves get clinkers and if so....how do you clear or clean them?

 
csstoker
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Post by csstoker » Thu. Feb. 01, 2018 2:15 pm

I never totally shut mine down during the season. Once a week, while running, I take the tube on my shopvac and give the stove pipe exterior several gentle raps to encourage any accumulation to take a hike up or down. Then I pull the plug, bang the inside side walls a little with the shop-vac tube, vacuum the bottom, vent box, and baro, catch the burn box ledges, grate ledge, brush the door, close up and plug it back in. Every now and then, if it is idled back too much, I have to plug it back in half way through so I don't lose the burn, take a beer break, and catch the second half clean after several minutes. Total clean time for me is under 10 minutes as I also brush-vac the motors/connections, top of stove...

I find no reason to shut it down to swap out ash pans. Deep cleaning in the off-season.


 
unklechuckles19
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Post by unklechuckles19 » Fri. Feb. 02, 2018 9:28 am

homeskillet wrote:
Tue. Jan. 30, 2018 8:57 pm
I call them clinkers...........chunks of unburnable "whatever" that clog up the firebox. The only way to clean them out of a pellet stove fire box is to shut the stove down and scrape fire box clean. I would think if a coal stove got clinkers, you would have to shut stove down and scrape the burner, but many people report running a coal stove 24/7 for months at a time. Hence the question.....do coal stoves get clinkers and if so....how do you clear or clean them?
I find it's much more common for a hand fed stove to "clinker" up like you're thinking. Yes, stoker stoves can have issues with coal sticking together and forming a clinker, but it's rare from what I've seen. Typically I recommend to stoker burners to do a quick cleaning once or twice per year, depending on coal consumption, much less than the weekly (some times more frequently) cleaning of pellet stoves. Typically with the stoker we burn in our show room I'll pick a warmer day and shut the stove down, clean the pipe and the top of the stove, vacuum out whatever ash I can get to inside the burn box, run the vacuum hose over the holes in my grate and put it all back together; probably takes me no longer then 15 minutes once it's cooled down. With our pellet stove that we burn, I typically shut it down once a week and do a thorough cleaning (under the burn pot, scraping the burn pot, ash pan, heat exchange tubes, trap doors, etc.).

If you haven't already, you may want to try some different pellets, I don't know what you're burning now but cheap pellets will definitely burn dirtier then the higher quality pellets. If you haven't heard of it, search around the interwebs for the "leaf blower, pellet stove cleaning" trick. That's my "go-to" for cleaning pellet stoves, it works wonders.

 
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captcaper
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Post by captcaper » Fri. Feb. 02, 2018 5:37 pm

Yea.. I have to shut down and scrape out around the pusher bar.. crud builds and effects the pusher bar travel... depends on how cold it's been ...as to how long it'll go between ..not bad... such a great stove for 4 seasons now..flawless..I put some oil around the pusher bar as it helps dissolve the crud I can't scrape out.

 
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swattley01
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Post by swattley01 » Sun. Feb. 11, 2018 3:23 pm

my cousin has a pellet stove and i am running the gnome 40 coal. yes the pellet stove builds up this hard burned material in the small fire box, and it builds up residue in the direct vent and has to be cleaned often.
i feel with my stove first there is much larger burn area and once the room is warm i can shut of the blower and just rely on the radiant heat from the stove, you can not do that with a pellet stove, with the coal fed stove i bank the feed rate down so low at night the stove cools off and i can remove the ash pan and even clean out the dust in the ash box area while the stove is running, and i only empty the bin after maybe two days.

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