Draft Loss on Direct Vent Unit - Needs Cleaning?

Hi guys,
Just as I turned to you guys on my installation, I am turning to you again to gain some more ideas to answer a question. I came home the other day smelled a slight sulphur smell coming from the basement. I checked and my KA-6 DV was running. The ash pan was well below full as I had emptied it the day before. I hooked up my manometer a nd found my draft was virtually nil. I opened up the shutter on the DV and was able to get it to -.02 again, but it was full open. I checked my vent outside my house and I see dust below the vent I banged it a couple of times and some dust fell out. I then went in the house and banged the vent pipe and of course nothing happened because it is sealed up.
- I've been running since October 6th, I'm really glad I installed this boiler, and I'm wondering if this is a sign I need to clean out the dust in the pipe and on the DV itself?
- I'll look at my litereature from Keystoker, but I think it recommended annual cleaning. Is it time for me to shut it down and vaccuum it out completely??
- Or do you think I can get away with vaccuuming out the bottom of the boiler and shut off power for 5-10 minutes and clean out the T-Trap on the bottom of my vent pipe???

Mike

Sounds like a cleaning is needed if your draft is not the best. Was it warm outside and the boiler running on idle/low? Sometimes that affects the draft, my hyfire gets pretty low on Idle and when it's warm outside.

It got near 40° the other day, but it dropped back into the 20's at night. I've got Direct Vent so the draft is induced by a blower on the back of the boiler. I'm thinking that it may possibly be a ash build up with some help from a northerly breeze. That is not the usual wind direction. I'll check it again when I get home. I think I will try to clean out the vent trap and the blower if I can get at it.

Sounds like it needs a good cleaning, I just did mine last night and filled my shop vac. I also used an air hose to blow out what I can't vac out. also make shure that the pv is oiled well. thats what started my cleaning frenzie at 8 pm.

Thanks!!! I held off on the cleaning last night. I checked the draft again yesterday when I got home from work and the draft was running at -.05. I'm guessing that it may have been the wind factor, but I may have tapped some of the dust out that did it. I readjusted it back down to -.03 and checked it several times. It seems to be steady now. I'm going to vaccuum it out when I empty the ash pan tonight and just keep an eye on it for now. If the CO detector goes off or the blocked vent switch kicks off then I know I've got a more than serious problem. Neither has tripped yet, so at least I'll know when something happens.

A while ago I took off my PV fan & cleaned it, just shut down for the cleaning (doesn`t take long) & was able to start without a relight. Then two days ago I took my cap section off outside & with everything running used a half moon scraper that I made & pulled out about what would be about half of a one pound coffee can of fly ash while standing away from it because the PV blows a good bit out as soon as you disturb it. Wasn`t having any problems, just thought it might be worth a try. Next time I think I`ll try a bit undersized brush if I can find one.

I just wanted to follow up on this. I cleaned the vent pipe trap and that did nothing. I cleaned out the vent cap outside and that did nothing. I vacuumed out the inside of my boiler and the stack outlet with no results either. My last ditch try was to remove the blower moter from the Direct Vent unit and clean it. I removed the four screws and vacuumed out the inlet and outlet for the motor. I took a brush and cleaned the inside of it out. That was it, I had plenty of draft after that. It only took about 5 minutes or so to clean it so I'll be doing a cleaning every month just to keep it clean and trouble free.

Mike