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How To Clean Out A St. Croix Prescott EXL Pellet Stove

I hope you forgive me for typing this post with dirty hands. I just got finished cleaning out the St. Croix Prescott EXL pellet stove.

Actually, I gave it more than a regular cleaning, I gave it more like one of those seasonal cleanings that everyone says you should do, but no one does. I even took some pictures.

The reason for this post is really to follow up from a comment left by “Linda” over at my original pellet stove post.

Apparently, many fine pellet stove owners out there are having issues with their #2 light blinking. I received tons of great comments on my other post regarding this. We have all been looking for the answer. Linda offered a lot of insight, so I decided to give her ideas a try. I think the main point of her comment was to say that cleaning out behind the “ash clean out covers” is very important. I thought I had been doing that, but she mentioned that what I was doing, wasn’t enough.

Okay, so let’s get going. I am going to show you some pretty interesting photos in this post…photos that are hard to find. Sure, there are tons of good pellet stove shots out there, but usually when people start cleaning out their stoves, they forget all about the camera. Not me, my friends. Not me.

I first went downstairs and shut the stove down. When it cooled itself and shut all the way down, I unplugged it. That’s very important, so make sure you do it. After that, I gave it a quick once over to make sure there were no large piles of ash anywhere. I didn’t give it a good cleaning, because I just did that yesterday. It didn’t need to be done again. I did push some ash into the ash pan and empty it though.

What I want to show you here are those ash clean outs that the owner’s manual talks about so much. I just realized this morning that there are about 4 warnings to keep these things clean. I guess it’s pretty critical. I have been doing this every time I clean the stove, so I really didn’t think I needed to do it again. Linda mentioned that we should be cleaning these out with a bottle brush or something like that to really clean them well. Good thing I had bought one of the bottle brushes from Lowe’s a while back. It’s really made for a fireplace or stove, but I was using it to clean bottles for my home brew.

Notice how there really isn’t too much ash in there? I’m talking about inside the hole. I just vacuumed this out yesterday, but I can imagine what it would look like if someone never cleaned these out. Probably like a packed wall of ash.

I didn’t take pictures of the right side, because it is identical to the left side.

By pushing the brush straight up, I didn’t get all that much ash to come out. There really wasn’t all that much up there. By pushing it sideways, I got a little bit more. I’ll show you in the next photo.

To get the pile of ash in the photo above, I basically pushed the bottle brush straight through, from the left side to the right side. I actually saw the brush coming through the right side.

I figured that was done, since I saw all that ash coming out. I decided to move on to clean out the exhaust fan. This is one of those things the book tells you to call the dealer for. It took me about 15 minutes to do the whole job, so it’s up to you.

To remove the fan, I took off the 6 nuts that surround the motor. I believe I used a 9mm 6-point tall socket. I also removed the vacuum hose and took off the vacuum switch wires as well as the fan wires. After everything was removed, the motor and fan popped right out.

With the fan in hand, it was easy to clean the blades (if you call them that). You can use an old paint brush or a rag or something like that. Just get the ash off the blades. The owner’s manual says this fan does not require oiling.

I also decided to take a photo of the rear part of the exhaust vent. This is one of those things we always wonder about, but unless you have taken a pellet stove apart, you will most likely will never see.

As you can see, there wasn’t really too much ash buildup on either the fan or the exhaust vent. I brushed them off and put everything back together. I lit the stove up and watched it burn for a while. I haven’t yet put the wires back on the vacuum switch. I still have them jumped. I’m not sure I have the heart to go through that again, since the stove has been running so wonderfully the way I have it now.

Questions, comments, concerns?

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My Firewood Pile

This is one of the firewood piles I made so far. There are three others about this size. I am not sure how much wood that is, but it’s a pretty good amount.

I did a little wood splitting this afternoon. It was so nice outside. The temperature was cool, so I didn’t sweat like I did over the Summer. It’s great to work around the house during Autumn. The crisp air is very welcome.

Firewood pile

I got a little excited after splitting the larger logs, so I decided to go over and cut down a stump that has been bothering me. I split that too. Now, that’s on the pile.

Then, I went into the woods and cut down a nice Red Oak tree. I tossed the branches down on the pile and cut up the firewood. I need to split some of it, but I’ll save that for another day. After I was done with that, I turned around and noticed a really pretty scene.

Here, I’ll show it to you…

Early Autumn

Early Autumn

The Maples and Birches go first.

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A New Front and Side Walkway – Topping the Driveway

I am not a huge fan of properties that look too perfect. I really like to keep the natural look of the area mixed in with whatever I am doing.

We live right at the bottom of the Shawangunk Ridge. We can see the cliffs if we walk to the end of our driveway and look to the right. The native stone for the area is Shale. It is a pretty good looking stone…blueish grayish.

As you can see from this photo, we were in dire need of a cleaned up front walkway. I had considered putting in pavers, but thought the style might stick out too much. They were also expensive and it would be a sin to throw out all of the existing blue slate that already made up the sidewalk.

I decided to go with what was already in place, but cleaned up quite a bit. The driveway was already made from Crushed Shale, so I ordered 10 yards to be delivered from a local guy. People love to use crushed shale around here because it packs down really nice and is perfect for driveways.

I took up all the existing slate from the walkway and stacked it in piles on the front lawn. I made sure not to keep it there for very long because I didn’t want to kill the grass. I got my hoe out and dug out all the weeds that had made a nice home for themselves over the years. Then, I layed down Landscaping Fabric to block any future weeds and grass. I saw that there was already a thick gravel base, so I didn’t need to add too much to that. I put a thin layer of crushed shale on top of the landscaping cloth and then put the slate back on that. Then, I filled in between all the slate with more crushed shale. Over the weeks, it will pack down from the rain and hold the slate nice and tight.

I made sure that the slate and gravel was high enough towards the steps to cover up the footings at the bottom of the steps.

I also spread most of the gravel out to put a nice new layer on the driveway. I needed to raise the end of the driveway up about a foot from a different project I will talk about later.

I needed to made a side walkway to go to the basement door around the side of the house, but I had run out of landscaping fabric. The benefit of using landscaping fabric is that there are very small holes in it that lets the water run through when it rains. If you are covering large areas, this is important so you don’t create run-off. In this case, since the side walkway was only going to be about a foot and a half wide, I picked up some heavy black plastic from the hardware store and cut it to size. I layed that down and put a thin layer of gravel on it and then placed the slate on the gravel. Just like the front walk, I filled in between the slate with more gravel.

Now, it looks like a nice, semi-natural walkway around the house. Nothing too obtrusive.

And there you have it, a nice new front walkway, side walkway and driveway, all for less than $300.

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