Cleaning stove glass when hot.

grahamc2003

I'd be asking why the glass gets dirty (btw, a scrunched up dry newspaper gets soot off, but not tar). But the soot and tar shouldn't be on the glass anyway - if it is, just think what it's like up the chimney.

Run the stove at the correct temperature, with the correct amount of airflow entering, and a reasonably modern stove shouldn't get the glass dirty, but if it does get dirty, it should self-clean next time it gets hot.

Too much air entering means you're wasting the heat in the room, which just goes up the chimney for no reason. Too little air means no enough oxygen for the smoke to burn, and means soot/tar deposits on the glass and everywhere else it travels. Although mine is supposed to run all night (by loading up with wood and turning the input air right down to a minimum), if i did that, the amount of soot/tar produced (which is just unburnt fuel which these days, one way or the other, is very expensive) would, to my mind, eventually clog up the chimney as well as sooting up the glass. Seems more sensible to me to avoid any soot/tar, so I forego that facility (it's dead easy to light whenever I want to anyway).

To avoid soot and tar, get the stove hot, then turn the input air down just until you see smoke at the end of flames within the stove, then open the air a touch so all the smoke is burnt. If you don't allow smoke, then you don't get soot or tar, and you also get the max heat from the fuel.

crphillips

Sound advice in theory but one of the main problem I come across when sweeping chimneys is that the customer wasn't given good advice on sizing their stove properly. They've usually been sold a stove that is too big just so the shop/fitter can make more money on a bigger stove. Obviously if the stove is too big then you can't always burn with clean flames and plenty of air as it would overheat the room. The only solution to this is to burn a smaller fire but then all of the heat goes up the flue. Size your stove properly and the above info is great.