Wood Burning Stove - Glass doors always smoked up!

You say the stove has been rebuilt. Also, I cannot find any reference to a Blenheim stove on the Stovax web site. I therefore suspect that the stove is rather old in design.

Modern wood burning stoves have what is often called an "air wash" system. The fumes are diverted within the stove to ensure better burning and clean(ish) air passing across the inside of the glass, stopping a lot of the sooty coating.

It may be that the only thing you can do is change the stove. :-(

We have a Morso "squirrel" with the air wash system. Burning well seasoned hardwood (24 hours a day) it gets totally blackened after about a week. But when we are only burning it for an evening at a time, the glass will still have some light brown soot deposits after a night. Giving the store a really hot burn removes the majority of it. Household ammonia works brilliantly at removing the soot (plus your nasal hairs/mucous membranes), and for seriously recalcitrant "creosote" patches, I've used a razor blade in a holder (designed for removing paint from windows).

Good luck, Nathan

We have an AArow stove in the kitchen which behaves in a similar way. It has an airwash system for inlet and I always buy well seasoned, dry wood from our local supplier and mix it with my own wood which is at least four years old. The glass still darkens overnight.

It's usually when the air inlets are closed to damp the stove down for the night that the problem occurs and the glass can be cleaned simply by letting the fire blaze up for a time so that it gets hot enough to burn off the coating on the glass.

We find that a straightforward sopay rag is all that's normally needed to clean the glass with, occasionally, a little rub with a nylon pot scourer. I reckon we clean ours every couple of weeks.

I don't believe them. I know someone who claimed that - with a super duper all singing all dancing modern stove with bells but when we stayed with them I caught her cleaning the glass in a morning ...

Mary

I read some literature on woodburners a little while back. Some claim to have specially designed airflow so that cool clean air is draughted over the inside of the glass so as to keep the soot off. Whether it works or not I don't know, but does Sovax make such a claim for your model?

Andy

I found on ours that an occasional good hot burn with a cleaner fuel got rid of the soot.

"Christopher Roberts" wrote in news:jvGub.4609$ snipped-for-privacy@news-text.cableinet.net:

I have certainly seen some stoves that do keep amazingly clean. Try

They do tend to look just a little mucky (a slightly whitish film on the glass) when not fired up but come almost perfectly clean in use.

Rod

Had one of these in our old house. Pre air wash design but if you let it g et going by opening the air intake at the bottom the soot will burn off, bu t it will be so warm that you can't get near it!! You won't be cold! If y ou want to see the flames you can use them with the doors open.

After 12 years I imagine he's probably solved the problem.

Yes, our Esse is an airwash design and only soots up if both vents are completely in the closed position (doesn't necessarily mean they are both completely closed, of course).