so this is my hutch double wall fireplace insert recently i made a video where i looked at cleaning
and lubricating and fixing up the blower assembly there and part of that process i repainted it
because it had some rust and some peeling paint on there so while i had it apart i figured i'd
paint it unfortunately that made the rest of the fireplace insert look a little bit old i mean this
thing is over 30 years old anyway i thought i would try cleaning the outside of this up and
repainting it so part of the thing is there's a lot of trim on here so this was the trim piece
that was up on the very top here on mine this just pulled right off right over here were the side
vents and there's a an expanded steel grill and then this seems to be brass i checked and it's not
magnetic and this was the last piece i need to get off and on mine this was really tight so what i've
got was one of these pry bars and i have a block of wood there just to get it spaced out a little
bit and there's a lip in there that you can catch there's two lips so you have to get on the
second one yeah because there's there's a metal lip inside here and then this piece fits around
that metal lip yeah there we go so yeah you can see that piece just fits on there i need to clean
that up a little bit i guess that's where the air comes out see i guess the way this works is
the blower is inside that bottom housing i showed you in the previous video it sucks air
in both sides on the bottom and then blows it out that center vent goes around the firebox
and then it comes out these two side vents and then this top vent the doors just lift off here
they they will come off real easy so i'll probably do those separate the only other thing i've done
on this insert since i purchased it was i had to replace these door gaskets so i just got some
braided fiberglass gasket material and then i just used some of that red high temperature silicone
and i just ran a bead of that around the outside of the door and then put the gasket
stuck it into that material and then just shut the door and flip the latch over and that held
the gasket material in place until the adhesive set i went one size up from whatever was in the
door originally so i put a little bit thicker gasket in there and that's worked pretty well
cordless angle grinder here with a wire wheel on it let's just see what this does
see how the paints really got thin there it comes right off yeah i think i'll just go around hit all
the spots there especially this front area here i guess that's where it gets the hottest and get
that all wire brushed off okay i think i got the insert pretty much cleaned up i have a wood block
here with some sandpaper and i hit the rusty areas right here on the top there was a little
bit on the front on the vent there and then down here just went over with some sandpaper and then
i tried cleaning it i went with some denatured alcohol and just completely soaked couple of rags
then i tried it with some degreaser spray and soaked a couple more i don't think it's really
dirt it's more like oxidized paint the more you scrub it the more paint you can see how it's
really come off of the top of that vent there so what i found worked the best was just get a bucket
and at first i had a water and then some dishwashing soap and went over with a scrubbing
brush and then cleaned it up with a sponge like that and i've changed the water out a couple of
times already you can see how dirty it gets just from wiping the thing down i'll probably do one
or two more bucket fulls of water just rinse it down yes it's still drying i was just curious here
yeah that's quarter inch thick steel plate that this thing's made out of that whole front anyway
and i think the firebox is all out of that same thickness so that's a big heavy piece of steel
there and those doors are solid cast iron they're really heavy i've got them outside
i definitely like having this here this is my backup heat right now it is plugged into the wall
it's using grid power with the power cord there but i could hook this into my solar power inverter
so if the power were to go off i could run this thing it takes a little over a hundred watts to
run the fan and i would have heat in the house that's assuming the solar heat wouldn't be working
maybe it was a long stormy period a week long like we had back in january we had about a week
where there was no solar heat i didn't run a fire in here just because it was a rather warm storm
so it didn't get all that cold in the house i have solar heat for primary heating this is my
backup heat and then my third level of heat is a natural gas furnace which hasn't been
run to heat the house in well over a decade so i like having multiple sources of heat
i mean if the gas service is cut i can't use the furnace but i've still got two versions of heat
i can do the solar heat is totally off grid if it's not sunny i can run the fireplace and
if need be i can power it off grid i usually just power it on the grid just because it's easy to do
and i usually let this run overnight and this thing can run all night on about
10 15 cents worth of electricity on the flip side my furnace would cost a dollar
to run it for one hour just in natural gas and then the blower in the furnace probably uses
500 watts of power so this thing uses maybe a quarter of the power of the blower in the furnace
and the fuel doesn't cost anything so yeah i i believe in having multiple sources of heat
okay youtube we got the fireplace insert painted there i just used some
old uh paper grocery bags that stuff in around the gap between the fireplace and the insert
and then i just cut a piece of cardboard to fit in around the curve part there and
then i can paint this side and then take the cardboard flip it over and paint the other side
yeah i did two coats of paint i let it dry oh an hour hour and a half in between coats
yes anyway the paint is nice and dry it's looking like maybe next weekend we're gonna have a
like a day or two of cloudy rainy weather so usually when that happens i don't get any
solar heat but when it's stormy they allow wood fires with the air quality district and hopefully
we can light a fire in here get the paint cured off so let me show you the doors i got the doors
outside i just got them painted too so i took the two insert doors outside here wire brushed them
up and got into all the little nooks and crannies with a small wire brush and then took off all the
hardware so i've got the pinch pins and also the air screws there off and i cut a couple of
little cardboard templates there to cover up the glass and just held those down with a weight well
i painted them here so this should be ready to go and got the brass part here covered on the handles
so i didn't get paint on that and gave these guys two coats i'm gonna let them dry here out in the
sun today so i think that turned out pretty good amazing how heavy these doors are they're just
solid cast iron it's like two hands to pick these doors up they're
massively heavy just solid inch thick cast iron once the paint sets up a little bit i'm
going to flip them over and finish cleaning off the glass on the back side i scraped off most
of the soot and whatnot this on there but i think i'll just give it a rub down with glass
cleaner or if i have to use some degreaser i'll play around with that i figured i would do that
later i did wire brush off all the loose posits on the back side
okay we got the fireplace insert all finished up and let the paint dry for a week and a half and
we're finally getting some stormy cloudy weather so we've got a pretty good wind blowing tonight
it's supposed to rain overnight and then be cold in the morning so i figured this would be
a perfect time to run the fireplace get it heated up so the paint's supposed to get up to around 250
fahrenheit for roughly an hour i showed you some still images i threw the two doors in my gas
grill the other weekend and put two burners on low and that kept the temperature in the grill
to about right around 250 so i left them in there for about an hour with the grill on
and then i turned the burners off and let them cool down for a couple hours so one thing you
might be able to see the blower i did with a flat black enamel the fireplace insert itself is with
the flat black high temperature and there's a slight grayish tint to the fireplace insert
so the colors don't match perfectly but i think over time the blower box tends to get
covered with ashes when you throw wood in and when you clean out the firebox
you get the ashes over the paint and usually i'll just brush it off with my
broom but that'll leave kind of a light dusting of ash on there so i think by the time this gets
covered with some ashes a few times the paint will be pretty similar color oh there we go 270
there's 230 220 yeah it's only 120 up on top
really happy with the way the paint turned out one thing i did do is i
put some silver high temperature paint on the air damper knob there give it a little contrast
really happy with the blower it's super quiet before it used to be a real loud buzzing sound
really heavy vibration and let's just try the other speeds here there's medium
that was medium and high i usually run this on low speed i'll leave this running all night and then
after the fire goes out and the firebox cools down the fan shuts off yeah this is probably about like
it was the day it was installed that was back in the late 1980s and now it's working just as good
as new so yeah if you have one of these inserts it's not terribly hard to clean up and then
just get some high temperature paint or barbecue paint that would be the other thing you could use
yeah so really happy with the way the paint turned out really happy with the blower
now that i got that cleaned out and lubricated so hopefully it'll last another 30 plus years
and then somebody else can take over with it it'll probably be outlawed by that time
i used to heat the house entirely with this back in the day now this is the first fire i've had
this heating season really didn't need to run it tonight but i just wanted to get the paint
cured and it was a reasonably cold night anyway if you have any questions about
that post up in the comment section down below and as always thanks for watching