Commentary by Christy Solo
When I woke up on Christmas Eve I was looking forward to speed-running my weekly “Get mailing labels on papers, get papers to post office, then do weekly banking, shopping, etc.” gauntlet so I could get back to my cozy living room and whip up my own personal traditional holiday dinner of…tacos.
I pushed the “ignite” button on my living room pellet stove, then took the dogs out for their morning constitutional. Usually by the time I get back upstairs my little Castle pellet stove is burning away. Such was not the case on Christmas Eve.
I could hear the pellets “tink, tink, tinking” into the pot, so I knew the hopper wasn’t clogged (the usual issue), but there was no “whoosh!” as the pellets caught fire.
I unplugged the stove (turn it off and turn it back on again is often a universal fix) and then hit ignite again, with the same results; all “tink, tink” no flame. I had to face the reality that the stove’s igniter had finally given up the ghost, and it was going to be a chilly Christmas Eve morning. Igniters last between 3-5 years and mine was four months shy of the 5-year mark.
The indoor/outdoor thermometer on my bookshelf told me it was a balmy 63° inside so after hitting the internet and ordering a new igniter, I decided the best option was to just get ready to go into town as quickly as possible 1. To keep warm 2. So I could get through the weekly tasks as quickly as possible and get home early to sort the heat situation.
I did have a temporary solution while waiting for my new igniter to arrive. I have a second Castle stove in my bedroom, so I knew I could “just” get the igniter out of that one and put it in the living room stove, then put the new one in the bedroom stove whenever it arrived.
It would mean one chilly bedroom for…however many days it took for delivery over the holidays…but that was exponentially better than a frigid living room and kitchen area.
Before I left for town, I had the foresight to find an instructional video on YouTube showing me exactly how to take the stove apart, replace the igniter and put it all back together again. A quick view of “key parts needed” for the job via the video left me confident I didn’t need to pick up any extra bits, parts or tools on my foray into town. The less shopping I had to do on Christmas Eve, the better.
For all my speediness, it was still around 4 p.m. before I was back home, had the video up on my laptop and my toolkit out to tackle the disassembly – the thermometer still sat at 63° but with darkness approaching, I knew that was going to drop quickly.
Taking off the exterior panels was easy enough but was also a stark reminder that when my brother used to say “90% of repairing anything is cleaning” he was not wrong.
Dear reader, the interior of my pellet stove was chock full of epic amounts of dust and dust bunnies. Honestly, I’m amazed it worked at all. One thinks to clean the ash, soot, etc. from the “burning part” of a stove, but the sealed back casing with all the moving parts part? Yeah, no hadn’t occurred to me. Lesson learned!
After copious amounts of vacuuming and Swiffering I was ready for the “remove all four bolts on the auger housing” portion of the igniter replacement.
It was then I realized that the video had skipped the “actually getting the bolts loose” part and cut to our video guide effortlessly making the last few turns of each bolt with just their fingertips.
Quite the dirty trick Anonymous YouTube Instructional Video Maker-Person!
Honestly, I don’t know how they got the bolts loose at all, because even I – with my child-sized hands – could barely get a manual screwdriver into the limited space along with my hand. Getting any leverage in the too-tight space was impossible. Getting a power drill in the too-tight space – also impossible.
Several hundred curse words later, I finally went with an Allen wrench with its whopping two inches of “lever” to get those bolts to give. I was pleasantly surprised my “came with the tool kit” set of Allen wrenches didn’t splinter to bits under the pressure.
Cold, dusty and dirty I finally removed the last bolt and knew I had to take a break for some dinner before disassembling the bedroom stove for parts. Dinner was not my anticipated taco fest, but was instead french fries baked up in my toaster oven and some fresh strawberries – time was of the essence.
With the bulk of the learning curve conquered via taking apart the first stove, taking apart the bedroom stove was far less frustrating and time consuming.
That stove was also “so clean it looked practically new” because it gets far less use than the living room stove.
Switching out the igniter and putting the whole living room kit-n-kaboodle back together was a veritable breeze compared to the disassembly (minus the part where the cast iron siding slipped and fell into my forehead when I reached for a screw – I got a goose egg for Christmas!)
With everything back together I finally hit the “ignite” button at about 9:35 p.m. then held my breath because “the igniter has died” was only my best deduction as to why it wouldn’t light.
Luckily Occam’s Razor won the day and by 9:40 p.m. I had fire! And to all a good night!
