That persistent haze is back on my fireplace glass! What gives? In this episode, DirtFarmer Jay shows you how to diagnose what the problem is, and what you can do about it.
Gas-fired stoves and fireplaces are a great addition to the home. Over time, it’s very common for a haze to appear on the interior of the fireplace/stove glass. GEEK ALERT! There’s actually a scientific reason for it. When your stove or fireplace first “fires up”, the firebox is quite cool and is not anywhere the optimum operating temperature that is needed for the gas or propane to burn completely. You may see a flash of condensation form on the glass when the flame first starts. This is normal and is simply the moisture in the gas/fuel that is not burned off immediately so it forms on the glass momentarily. As the firebox heats up, this disappears - at least for a time.
However, there are compounds in the condensation that over time with repeated occurrences can form haze on the glass. If the glass is cleaned every season, there’s a very good chance you’ll be able to get the glass to be clear again, using a product specifically for this purpose. Our favorite is Rutland® Glass Cleaning Cream. We have found that typical glass cleaning solutions, such as WIndex®, or vinegar-based cleaning solutions look like they are cleaning it until the glass dries completely. Then there it is again - that persistent haze!
Please allow us to digress for a moment. Here’s something that many people DON’T KNOW. The glass that is found in gas-fired stoves and fireplaces is much LESS related to the window and tempered glass most of us are familiar with and much MORE related to ceramics and ceramic glass cookware such as Pyrex® or CorningWare®.
High-temperature bora-silicate ceramic glass is designed to be able to withstand very high temperatures on one side of the glass and much lower temperatures on the room-facing side. To have that wide of a range of temperature in a distance of approximately 3/16” (6mm) is quite a feat! Said another way, this type of glass expands and contracts very little (it has a low thermal coefficient) with extreme heat and is remarkably strong.
Back to haze. If the haze on the inside of the glass is actually a white residue (the by-product of incomplete combustion), then it’s likely you can clean it off with a slightly abrasive cleaning cream - like Rutland®’s. But, if it won’t come off, then the glass is actually etched. This micro-pitting and resulting opaqueness happen because the sulfur compounds in the gas residues and water mix and form sulphuric acid. When this lies on the glass surface, it will attack (etch) it.
When that happens, you have two choices: 1.) Live with it. 2.) Replace it.
If you do replace it, DO NOT replace it with ANY type of window glass, including tempered safety glass. It will shatter. It MUST be replaced with ceramic high-temperature glass. You should expect to pay anywhere from $100 to $300 for the piece you need. Borosilicate glass can not be cut using typical glass cutting tools. Specialty equipment is required to do this, which also factors into the higher price for this glass compared to window type glasses.
An online source for custom-sized glass replacements is www.woodstove-fireplaceglass.com/. There are other sources as well, both from your local fireplace supply store and other online retailers as well.
Can you remove the haze from your stove or fireplace glass? Maybe. But either way, maintain or replace, with what you’ve learned, you can JUST DO IT YOURSELF!
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Hey, Dirt Farmer Jay here from DirtFarmerJay.com. If you're at this episode, it's because you have
one of these type of devices in your house, which we love having, but here's what happens
over a period of time. Season after season, the glass down on the front gets hazy,
and it diminishes the appearance of the fire through here, and just doesn't make it as
pristine of when you first got it. What can you do about it? We're going to take you step by step
how you determine what that haze is, and if you can get it off, maybe so, maybe not. Stay tuned.
Dirt Farmer Jay here from DirtFarmerJay.com. Hey, thank you for joining us for this episode where
our emphasis is just do it yourself, and that's the case here when you have one of these great
devices. We actually have two of them in our home, one like this, which is a wood stove replica,
another one that is a bigger model and different manufacturer. We're happy to be looking at a
Dover brand, but all of these are similar in the way they operate and some of the features on them,
and so what I have to say, no matter what you have, will be applicable for you. Now, let me
just give a little bit of a caveat. If you are just stopping by and you just want a quick thing,
just give me the technique. This is the wrong video. Here's why. We don't know what that haze
is down there. It might be just a residue. It might be something that with a little bit of abrasive
cleanser, we can get it off there, or a specialized project or product, or it may be this glass is
damaged, and I'll go into that. We're going to learn with you, and if you'll stick with me, you're
going to come out of this a lot smarter. You'll know how to take care of these long term, and
you'll know your true options. So be patient, and let's go through this step at a time. Okay, so the
first thing you need to understand on these types of devices is that the glass is actually inside
a decorative shroud that is in the front, and you can hear it. That is actually just sitting there.
This serves two purposes. One, to make the stove beautiful, and I love the styling of these type
of stoves. They're very additive to the decor, but the other is thermal mass. So this heats up
along with all the shell of everything else and radiates that glorious warmth in the winter months
into your living space. So this is very important, but it's much more decorative than actually
holding the glass in or sealing the firebox where the combustion takes place inside. So the first
thing you're going to need to do to get to this glass, and you're actually going to end up removing
it to find out what that haze is, is you've got to pull off the outer shell, and this is a little
bit heavy. It's going to take some heft, so you're going to lift up on this, and when you do,
the bottom's going to pop out, and there you go. That is heavy. Okay, so now we've got that out of
the way. The next thing we're going to do is we're going to go ahead and remove this shroud right
here. All right, so let's take a close look at this. What you have is a retainer frame. I'm going
to go ahead and use the lights on my flashlight. You can see this frame that's going around
the firebox that's holding on to this, and if you look right up in there and in there,
there's some clips that are being held with retainer spring clips, and then down here,
there's actually some clips that are holding the bottom edge, and you don't have to undo all of
these here. A lot of these have a quick release, so here's what we're going to do. We're going to
go ahead and illuminate this. You're going to see me reach in this handle, and I'm going to
see. There we go. I was able to get it to release, and now I'm going to have to let go of the drill
to take care of the other one, so I'm going to lift that up, and this should tilt out and lift
out. Here we go, and there we go. Now we're now in the open firebox, and you don't want to mess
with any of this, but notice around this glass, you have this what looks like cloth that's doing.
This is actually asbestos, which is a mineral, very high temperature, but this is a ribbon that
goes around as a gasket and seals this in. Now we have the glass here. Let's go ahead and take a
close look at it and go ahead and take some next steps with it. All right, let's go ahead and get
this glass out of the frame. We're going to go ahead and remove this. I just put my fingers under,
lift it up, and when you do so, that asbestos is going to come off, so I'm going to go ahead and
set this over to the side. So what I've done right now is gotten a flashlight for a couple reasons.
Number one, when I hold this up high like that, can you see the haze there? So look at that haze,
and that haze, you think, okay, I might be able to get that off. Well, it doesn't rub off. If I wet my
fingers, it looks like I'm getting it off of there. That's entirely temporary. Watch it come back as
soon as the moisture flashes off. I also want you to notice something. If I put the light on the side
and I shoot long way through the glass, look at that. Look at the yellow glow on that. So why is
that happening? That is because this glass, this type of glass that is found in these stoves, is
much more closely related to Pyrex, Corning ware, those type of ceramic glasses. It's known as a
borosilicate glass, and it is a specialized glass for high temperature settings. You will never use,
and don't do it, you will be sorry if you do. I warned you. You never use standard window glass,
tempered glass, any of that sort of thing in these applications. It cannot take the heat.
This type of glass is specifically for these applications because the inside of the firebox
is going to get around 200 degrees. So you think about on the back side of the glass, it's 200
degrees, right? You know, that far apart. On the other side of it is the room temperature, whatever
the room is. That's a lot of temperature difference. And when the firebox heats up, standard window glass
would expand a lot. That's called a thermal coefficient. My apologies. This has a low
thermal coefficient, meaning it expands very little. Standard window glass would expand quickly
and shatter, whereas this is very strong, very stable, expands very little. So don't get the two
confused, but now you have a very tough particular piece of glass that is really more carefully
described as transparent ceramic. All right, let's take a look and see what we can do to get that off.
When it comes to cleaning products around our household, dirt farmer Maggie is the expert.
So what we're going to have her do is take us through a series of steps on what will cut this
haze. So the first thing she does is turn over the glass, put the interior of the glass up where the
haze is, and we're going to just try plain old Windex or ammonia-based window cleanser. So here
you can see she's going in scrubbing there, working through this, and at first shot it looks like, hey,
where'd the haze go? It's pretty much kind of disappearing. Well, okay, we'll see if this is
actually going to do the trick. Let's hold that up. Oh, nope. I'm going to go ahead and turn on
a light as well. Look at that, and the stripes that you see through that, watch them disappear.
That's simply the residual moisture, and as the moisture goes away, the haze comes back. So that
isn't going to work. So now we're going to need to go to a secondary product. The next thing we're
going to try is the Lime-A-Way product. Now Dirt Farmer Maggie uses this around here for residue
that's on the windows from the sprinkler system, calcium, and it has not sulfuric acid in it,
diluted, but sulfumic acid, which is in the same class. We're going to see if this helps
cut this a little bit. So what she's going to do is put it on there. She's going to use a cloth
and rub it in. Now notice in this case, you know, they say that you should use rubber gloves and
that sort of thing. She used a cloth between her and that just to see what we're going to get. So
she's going to work on this and then dilute it down using water to cut it and see what we get.
So now you can see it's there, but she has not rinsed off the product yet. So she'll need to do
that using her clean cloth to rinse all that off and then to see if we now have a restored glass.
Let's see what we get. Well, it looks great right now, but we'll dry it and then see if we get
that haze. It didn't do it. There again, you see the moisture wicking off right there.
So, so far these two household products have not done the trick. All right, so far both of those
attempts have not worked. Now we're going to use a specialized product for this, Rutland's White Off,
also their glass cleaning cream that contains pumice that we're going to see if indeed we can
remove this haze. So let's go to it in the directions on this say to put a liberal amount
in a smaller area, then to take a paper towel and in a circular motion really scrub hard in an area
with this. So she's going to stay in a smaller area and we're going to go ahead and she's really
bearing down on that to see whether or not we can get that to buff it out. Okay, here we go. We now,
look at this. So we can see some of it. Again, that's moisture coming back. So folks, in our case,
we have some bad news and this is the diagnostic that we walked you through to determine the cause.
All right, thanks Maggie for doing all of that work and let's go back and I'll walk you through
the remaining solution that you have for this. Okay, so now what do we do here? Well, we've come
to this case. It is clear that our glass is etched or it's not very clear as you can see.
So we have two choices we can make here. One, live with it and if it's not too bad or it doesn't show
up, then we can just go ahead and keep it or it's time to replace the glass. Now, unfortunately,
it did get etched. What gives? Why would this get etched? What is going on here? Etching is actually
micro pitting that is a result of a chemical reaction and here's how it happens. When you
first start up one of these fireplaces, the operating temperature in the firebox is way less
than optimum for complete combustion of the fuel, whether it's propane or LPG. So what happens is,
not only is there water that's still in the gas or moisture, but that moisture contains
sulfuric compounds and those form over time and create sulfuric acid, which then starts to pit
the glass and cloud it like this. So you got a little bit of chemistry going on in there and the
only way to solve that over a period of time is to take this out and clean it at the beginning of
the season or at the end of the season, at least once a year to extend the life of this glass.
And you'll see when you first start up one of these fireplaces that usually, especially if it's
very cold, it's the first time you're starting the season, you'll see a flush of moisture because the
fire log in there and everything else is absorbed moisture that it needs to burn off initially.
But unfortunately for us, we got etched glass. Now, we can live with it or you can go ahead and
purchase this. You can purchase it online with some different links that I've given you in the
description below. You might be able to go to your local brick and mortar fireplace supply house and
get this glass done. Remember, because this is ceramic, you can't just buy a sheet of glass and
cut it. It takes very specialized equipment to cut this saw, trim the edges nicely so they're not
sharp and to make this ready to go. Visit one of the links below and perhaps you can get a piece
of glass for your setting. You need to be very precise. But let's go ahead and put this back
into operation. So what we're going to do, we're going to reverse the steps here. I am going to
make sure that I have the glass in the right way. This is the inside of the retainer frame.
So next thing I need to do is put my asbestos back on. All right, so we've got it almost on
there. As you can see, this is a little finicky, but it's important to get
this approximately halfway in and out on both sides. You can see I overdid it a little bit
right there. It's for two reasons. One is to insulate the glass correctly and cradle it
so that there is no hard points against it. And the second is to somewhat seal this as a gasket
because there's a very specific air to fuel ratio that's in there. And if you mess that up by having
air gaps around it, your flame won't burn correctly. You may get soothing and that sort of
thing. All right, we're now at this place right here. Let's take it back over here and we're
going to go ahead and get it installed back in. All right, this is a little dark over in here.
It's after hours here, but what we're going to do is reverse the steps. I'm just going to put
these tabs into these clips, tip it back up, and here we go. Now I need to grab those clips up here.
There we go. They're spring loaded. That is now sealed in. It's ready to go.
And we can go ahead and put this shroud on the front. There you can see right there it's all in.
Now this is ready to fuel up again, ignite, and get the fireplace going. And we'll probably just
live with this. If we did have to purchase a piece of glass here, this particular glass is about $90
for that. So remember, it's not window glass. There's a lot of different costs that go into
doing the right thing for this piece of equipment. If you found this video to be helpful,
please like it. And better yet, won't you subscribe to our channel? And when you do,
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this is Dirt Farmer Jay from DirtFarmerJay.com.
