Wood burning stoves are an excellent, energy efficient and powerful way to take the edge off a cold winter. That is, providing your wood burning stove is looked after properly. Looking after your wood burning stove couldn’t be simpler. It’s generally considered best to clean your chimney every six months, and considered best to also perform a visual inspection every year before turning it on again to ensure that all is well and all is good.
Your appraisal should include giving the wood burning stove a good clean in order to remove the accumulated soot and debris from the last year. You might think that there’s no point in cleaning your wood burning stove again – that you did it last year and haven’t used it since, but you’ll be surprised at how much builds up! It’s certainly worth a quick once over, and cleaning the wood burning stoves helps you identify issues and fix them before you burn your first lot of fuel for the winter. Please keep in mind that all of these steps are intended to be performed on a cold stove, and your stove should have been turned off for quite some time before attempting these.
To start, you’ll want to inspect the nearby plaster to ensure that no soot or tar deposits have migrated through from the chimney. A wood burning stove gets extremely hot, and this can happen from time to time, especially after a stoves’ first winter when your fixtures and fittings are still brand new. Don’t panic though, it can be easily resolved, and absolutely isn’t an indication of the quality of your stove.
Initially, you’ll want to brush away the dirt around the area, (dust and cobwebs certainly don’t make things easier!) and then apply a coat of stain block. You can find stain block at absolutely any stove retailer, and we recommend looking for one which is of the same brand as your stove. You might think that doing so feels like a bit of a cash grab, but there is method in this – there is pigment in stain block.
You’ll want to get the perfect match for your stove – rather than notice unsightly spots which are just a few shades darker or lighter than your wood burning stove. (This is especially true for enamel stoves – as they come in a variety of different hues, it can be extremely unsightly to have a patch which is off)
Repairing rust patches on your wood burning stove couldn’t be easier, either. You might be slightly dismayed to find that boiling kettles on a stovetop can often leave patches of rust. This is very easily taken care of, as well. You’ll need to cut a pad of medium-grade steel wool and in circular motions, rub away the dust until it vanishes. It should be mentioned that you absolutely should wear protective gloves and no cleaning product whatsoever is needed – just a lot of patience. Keep going, and you should be looking at a stovetop that looks as good as new.
