Tips on cleaning a wood-burning stove

Tips on cleaning a wood-burning stove

The chances are you installed a wood-burning stove either because you like the aesthetics or to save you money on your heating bills. For either of those reasons, cleaning is a vital part of ensuring you continue to reap the benefits of your stove.

Not only does regular cleaning keep your stove in immaculate condition, it also ensures that it continues to perform as efficiently as possible.

It’s not really possible to ‘over clean’ your stove. As a bare minimum you should give your stove a thorough clean every three months. Continue reading

Airwash: what is it and what does it mean for your wood-burning stove?

Airwash

Airwash might sound like a cutting edge piece of technology that Dyson have created to revolutionise cleaning your car, but it’s actually a lot more straightforward that.

It does involve air and it does involve cleaning, but cars and cyclone technology are omitted in favour of some basic physics and your trusty wood-burning stove.

It is one of those inventions that once you see how simple and effective it is, you wonder how it wasn’t used far earlier.

Airwash technology brings a flow of air into the firebox of your wood burner from a vent above the glass panel. The air is immediately forced directly downwards over the inside of the door. This creates a layer air which ‘washes’ over the glass at all times.

Flames and gases are both kept at bay by this constant flow of air, which prevents tar building up and causing the glass to blacken.

So, as we mentioned, airwash is not fancy in terms of the design or the technology involved, but it is very effective.

Since being able to see the real flames is one of the best parts of having a wood-burning stove, and since having a piece of grubby glass sitting in your living room doesn’t look particularly nice, airwash saves you a lot of hard work trying to get your glass clean.

The various methods people use in an attempt to keep their glass clean probably merit a blog post of their own, but suffice it to say that it’s not a chore that you would want to become a part of your life unnecessarily.

Buying a stove with an airwash system means you can:

  • Prevent the build-up of tar on the glass panel of your stove
  • Avoid cleaning your glass because the stove will keep itself clean
  • Always have the pleasant, homely view of the wood burning inside your stove