Stove Cleaning

Cleaning (Tips on cleaning stove)

Here's a list of tips on routine cleaning your stove. This page began from a discussion in a thread on the Bixby stove forum at http://forum.iburncorn.com/viewtopic.php?t=3161 .

Equip your vac with a drywall filter bag to prevent exhausting fine dust into the room.

To keep soot out of the pores of your hands, begin by saturating your hands with liquid detergent or handcream. Alternative is to use gloves. Disposable latex gloves work well for people who aren't allergic to them. Watch for sales at www.harborfreight.com and www.princessauto.com where they are sold by the box.

SAFETY ISSUE: Before aspirating ashes into your vac, allow sufficient time for your ashes to cool after shutting down your stove. Alternative is to use an ash vac for ash removal. One thread on the iburncorn forum mentions how one person inadvertently turned his vac into a flame thrower by failing to heed this safety issue. (Fortunately he was able to shut down and toss the flaming vac out the door, but reports are that the vac was never the same again!)

Create a negative pressure in the stove, if possible, to prevent ash & soot from escaping into the room. For the Bixby stoves, this can be accomplished by leaving the electrical power cord plugged in. The exhaust fan will then come on whenever the door is opened, creating a negative pressure. Ensure that your vent pipe has a proper vent cap to deter direct gusts of wind from blowing soot back into your stove and room.

Run the vacuum while you are cleaning and keep the hose opening higher than you are working if you are using a brush or tool to clean with. Keep the vacuum unit as far away from the stove as you can get it. It blows enough air to stir up ash in the air. The hose end should pull any fly ash in before it can spread. Don't have any other appliance in the house running or any vent open that creates air movement. Even with a warm stove not running the warm air rising from it will take fly ash with it.

Do not dump ash drawer directly into an open container (will create undue dust in the room). Instead, take it outside right away and deal with it there. If it must be dumped indoors, enclose it in a plastic bag and tip it into the bag while it is sealed. Allow time for the dust to settle inside the bag before removing the ash drawer.

To clean encrusted components such as burn pots, simply soak them in water for approximately 1 hour. Alternative is to scrub the part in hot water with a stiff bristle brush and the deposits will come off in a few minutes.

use pipe cleaners and/or other small flexible brushes (e.g. a 12 gauge gun cleaning brush) for ash removal

and/or reduce your vac aspirating hose to a smaller suction tube as shown below.

Compressed air may be used with extreme caution to clean out especially tight spaces such as the Bixby airwash. Before blowing compressed air into a stove, plan your blast very carefully; one wrong move and you'll be dealing with a "Chim chimminy chim chim chim chim shuree" situation. Seal all openings from which sooty compressed air can escape into the room. For example, to clean the Bixby 115 airwash with compressed air, first remove the ash drawer, keep the burn plates in place, and cover the burn pot. Blow compressed air into the airwash from below only. The blasted air will be confined to the burn area. Allow the dust to settle in the stove before opening the door. Do so while holding an aspirating vac hose at the door.