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To be honest I expected errors, I expected mistakes, missteps and even the occasional "oops." This is new to me, and I'm doing things like I've never done before.
This time however I let myself get carried a way a bit and made an error that could have been costly indeed.
Our wood pellet stove needs cleaned out at least once a week. You can push it a few more days but the ash does build up. This time we didn't have the air intake for the fire set right and the pellets built up, all the way to the hopper gate. This concerns me because we have a friend that had the fire in their auger which ended up destroying their stove. A rarity to be sure, but if their is one thing I've learned in my life...is that the million and one stuff will happen to me.
So I turned off the stove and let it cool, and started to clean it out with an older shop vac we have. Problem was, is that the ash wasn't completely cold.
Most of you already know where this story is going don't you?
Realizing that the embers were still hot, but unwilling to let them cool down anymore I finished the job, put the unit back together and restarted the fire. I then took the shop vac out into the garage and took the unit apart.
As I feared some of the embers were catching the vacuum filter on fire. So I took that part outside and rubbed snow all over the filter. I didn't see any more embers and assumed I got them all.
Most of you already know where this story is going don't you?
Of course, while I was doing this it never occurred to me to remove the vacuum bag from the top of the other unit.
Yep. Not only did the bag burn up, but it left a hole in the top of the shop bag unit, burning right through the plastic. Luckily, I had left that part of the unit outside in the snow, thinking that any additional embers would be to wet to catch fire, I guess I was wrong there. But at least I left it outside.
Nothing else was damaged and overall it's not much of a story to tell. I'm actually very embarrassed by it. However part of the reason for this blog is to prevent someone else from doing something stupid.
The shop vac was pretty old, I'm not even sure how it came into my possession, so it's loss isn't that big of a deal. I could have had the unit sitting inside my garage were there are currently nearly two tons of wood pellets, gasoline, wood and cardboard. Playing the "What If " game serves no purpose. I was stupid, it won't happen again.
I'm not sure if there will be a Holiday edition of this blog or not. So Happy Holiday's to you and yours!
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