Everhot 204 deluxe - Instruction Manual

Discussion in 'Designing, building, making and powering your life' started by Come MrTeleman, Apr 6, 2009.

  1. Come MrTeleman

    Come MrTeleman New Member

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    Hi

    We've moved into a home with an old everhot 204. First light up was a disaster with the house filling with smoke.

    We've since cleaned the chimney but no luck.

    We have no manual or anything so are guessing at what we need to do. And no idea what the pedal on the bottom left does.

    Does anyone have a copy of an instruction manual or installation manual or both?

    Any help would be appreciated
     
  2. ho-hum

    ho-hum New Member

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    Re: Everhot 204 deluxe - Instruction Manual

    MrTeleman,

    Pull the cooking elements off the top of the stove [2 o 3] and clean in there... The pedal could be used to rattle the grid the fire sits on.

    Is the flue open. It is a flat plate that slides into the base of the chimney. Also, in some winds smoke can blow back down the chimney but normally only in gusts. Sometimes wood stoves smoke till they heat up and start drawing air properly.

    There should be some form of air vent at the bottom of the fire door, some are adjustable with knobs.

    Generally pull the stove apart and clean it with a wire brush. Get wire into any holes you find and scrape around. The practise these days of burning 'wet' wood and packing cases must have clogged up many a stove.

    cheers,
     
  3. ho-hum

    ho-hum New Member

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  4. Come MrTeleman

    Come MrTeleman New Member

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    Re: Everhot 204 deluxe - Instruction Manual

    Thanks Ho Hum - I've been away for a few weeks so had no chance to reply. I'll try stripping it down and see what happens
     
  5. Alex M

    Alex M Junior Member

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    Re: Everhot 204 deluxe - Instruction Manual

    I used to have one a long time ago, an Everhot 204 Deluxe. It was a great asset. It was the sole source of hot water, heated most of the house and was a wonderful thing to cook with.

    I'll do my best to share what I can dredge from dim memory. There are four control knobs on the left of the back panel; from memory, they are Flue, Fire, Oven and Hot Water. We always left the hot water on High, although it is possible to get the water uncomfortably hot, so you might need to regulate it.

    Before lighting, make sure the ash tray (behind the door below the firebox door) is empty, and the whole area is clear of ash. Ash in here inhibits the flow of air into the fire. Also clear the grate of ash. The pedal on the lower left is a riddler. Pressing it vigorously with your foot shakes (riddles) the grate so ash falls into the ash pan. You can open the ash box door and riddle the grate from time to time while the fire's burning and see the ash fall into the tray.

    Set the Flue lever to Open, and the Fire lever to High or Hot (I don't remember the exact words on the label). Opening the flue lets smoke and heat go straight up the chimney, which is important for getting the fire started, and putting heat into the flue, which helps it draw. You only close it when you have heated the stove's mass, and got a hot bed of coals in the grate (or if you want to smoke the house out). The Fire lever controls a damper that lets air in under the fire. Opening both of these will let the fire get roaring. Also set the Oven control to Low. Setting it to High directs hot smoke around the oven box to heat the oven, which you can only do when you have a good hot fire, and the mass of the stove has heated up a bit.

    Use a lot of light kindling to get a hot fire going fast. You should only need one sheet of broadsheet newspaper to get dry kindling going.

    Also open the bottom (ash box) door, and leave it ajar for the first few minutes after lighting, until you have some good sized sticks burning. This lets plenty of air in under the fire (it might also smoke a bit, so bang it shut if you get too much smoke).

    Once the fire is well under way, close the ash box door and proceed to build up the fire in the grate with successively larger blocks of wood. You soon get the hang of the controls. We used to close the Fire lever progressively ahead of the Flue lever, but this depends on the fuel you're using; you'll see the fire die down or speed up as you fettle them, so a bit of practice will soon show you what works. Once the fire is burning well, and you have a bed of coals in the grate, set the Fire control to Low, then close the flue. You should be right from here on, but before you open the firebox door, always open the flue, or you'll risk a face full of smoke. If the oven is set to "High", you might get some smoke as well, but you'll get the hang of driving it, soon enough.

    Once you've got a good fire going, play about with the controls; you'll find that you can control the oven temperature quite well by moving the Oven lever about in conjuntion with the Fire and Flue controls, for instance, as you move the Oven control to "high", open the Fire control up a bit and close the Flue a little, etc.

    There's a good chance you'll need to clean it. Do you have the tools and brushes? The stove must be cold before you clean it. Start at the top and work down. I see you've already done the chimney, so the next step is to lift out the two hot plates with the tool that fits into the holes in the middle - the amount of soot built up on the fins underneath will indicate the condition of the rest of the stove - and take them outside to brush them clean. From memory, there's a small cover in behind the hot plates which gives you access to the space behind the oven. You should have a long, flexible scraping tool with which you can scrape the soot from the walls of the cavity behind the oven down onto the removable tray below the oven. Open the oven door and you'll see a hinged flap to right of the oven, between the hinges of the door. Slide this away, and you can get the tool in to scrape the soot from that cavity.

    It's important to keep these passages clean because this is the path of the hot gasses that heat the oven. While the stove's apart, you'll be able to see how the oven control directs the flow across the top of the oven, down the side, underneath, then up the back to the flue, or cuts that path off, allowing the heat to go straight up the chimney. If you bake a lot, you'll get a feel for the different performance of the oven as the soot builds up, and if you live in a very cold climate, you'll see how you can use the oven control to heat the kitchen up on a cold night.

    Once you're satisfied the insides are clean, carefully (VERY carefully) slide the tray out from under the oven. From memory, it's only about 40mm deep, and will be full of black fluffly, sticky, soot. If you're using well dried hardwood for fuel, the soot shouldn't be so horrible to handle, and cleaning should only be a seasonal ritual.

    I hope I've been helpful. I hadn't even thought about that old stove for years, so going over the ritual has made me a little nostalgic. Good luck with it, and enjoy the warmth! With a little practice, you'll soon master the art and science of slow combustion cooking. :D
     
  6. ardonau

    ardonau New Member

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    Re: Everhot 204 deluxe - Instruction Manual

    Hi

    Wrote this a couple of days ago and have only just got round to posting. It’s virtually a repeat of Alex’s instructions but I’m not wasting all this effort. My Everhot supplements the solar hot water system and they are both connected to the one hot water storage tank in the roof cavity.

    The outside knobs on the control panel (top left as you look at the stove) are for Hot Water, if you have a water jacket (on my stove, this is on the LH side of the firebox) and the Oven. The settings are from Low to High.

    The inside pair of knobs are for the Flue (top knob), set from Open to Closed and the Fire, set from High to Low. When both of these are in the central position ie Flue on Open and Fire on High you get maximum draft and maximum heat. This is the setting used when you first light the fire and if the Flue is closed while the fire is on High you will get smoke in the house because it can’t go up the chimney.

    If you open both the oven doors (the lower one is a warming oven) you will see between the ovens a tray which pulls out. This is like another grate and collects the black, crackly creosote stuff from the bottom of the chimney and around the top of the back of the stove. This needs to be emptied and the slot it slides into cleaned out regularly. I use a long flexible steel scraper I got from Scandia. At the side of the top oven, there is a panel which swings on a screw and opens onto a vertical shaft which also needs to be scraped out. Said black, crackly creosote stuff falls into the tray between the two ovens.

    For maximum efficiency, you need to take the hot plates off regularly and scrape off the creosote deposits on the undersides, and clean the ash deposits off the top of the oven. How often depends on how you use the stove and how dry your wood is; if you are banking it down overnight ie Flue closed and Fire on low, creosote will build up quickly, ditto if you are using green wood.

    With the hot plates off you can see a flap at the back of the oven, work the oven knob and see if the flap moves. It may be jammed up with creosote, this will cause the stove to smoke. If you can get in behind it with something like a long screwdriver have a good scrape around to loosen up any black, crackly creosote and scrape it out (good luck trying to get a wire brush in there). Lift off the little plate at the back of the stove top and do the same. The loosened deposits will fall into the tray between the two ovens. Again this needs to be done regularly – I know if the fire starts smoking when I have the Fire on High and the Flue Open that it’s time for a cleanout. If you’ve had the chimney swept this could be where the problem lies.

    As someone earlier mentioned, the pedal at the bottom tilts the grate from side to side to riddle the ash. When our grate needed to be replaced, we couldn’t get a similar replacement and had to go with a flat grate and ended up getting rid of the pedal.

    Also, check the firebricks lining the firebox; missing or damaged firebricks may cause smoking and reduce the efficiency of the stove.

    A warning – get your chimney swept every year. Creosote buildup can cause a chimney fire; I’ve had two and had to call the Fire Brigade to the last one and felt like a real idiot.

    If you have a water jacket and a hot water storage tank, make sure the tank has an overflow outlet and that this is clear. If the water in the tank gets to boiling point (this does happen) there has to be somewhere for the steam to go.

    Everhot stoves seem to be over complicated. I had a Rayburn in the last place and it was so simple. A slider across the bottom of the flue, and a screw out knob in the grate door – air in, air out.
     
  7. AlexQ

    AlexQ New Member

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    Hi, I have an Everhot Deluxe 204. I eventually found that my plumber had not followed the instructions in regard to the water pipes going from the hot water system to the jacket and then back to the hotwater system. He used the same size diameter pipe both directions. Unfortunately my manual was lost when I left it at a shop for some replacement parts (how unlucky i've been with this!) so I cannot check on the correct sizes of the pipes to be used. I now that has to be smaller than the other for the venturi effect to take place effectively.
    Could anyone tell me the correct sizes and which one is the cold water from the hotwater system and which is the hotwater from the oven jacket returning to the hotwater system.
    Many thanks in anticipation.
    AlexQ
     

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