Hopper HangUp - What is this weird stuff?

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No need to say more! That explains everything! ! !

They say right on the bag that they are distributed by:
International Forestry Products
One Patriot Way
Foxboro Mass

The same place that was distributing wood pellets call "Infernos" Something fishy here!
He may know personal shavers, razors, mayonaise and macaroni and cheese........But pellets seems to expand way beyond his dominion of comprehension!!! LOL


........Actually, I'm just bitter that the Patriots didn't move to Hartford!
 
Sorry to de-rail but they (Pats) should have moved to Boston at the time.
There was available setting/space on Milk Street at the time.
Make more sense than staying in Foxboro.
Hartford made sense too but get larger public support in Boston area.
Besides most of CT are Giants fans, lol
---Nailer---
 
Hartford didn't even support the Whalers. Not really a sports-oriented area, other than UConn.
 
He may know personal shavers, razors, mayonaise and macaroni and cheese........But pellets seems to expand way beyond his dominion of comprehension!!! LOL


........Actually, I'm just bitter that the Patriots didn't move to Hartford!

Actually he probably knows nothing about mac n cheese or mayo besides how they taste. That's a different Kraft alltogether. He is the Kraft that is tied to a lot of paper products, cardboard, wood pulp etc, along with his Sports Teams and a few other holdings.
 
I'm surprised that you guys cannot figure out that this is the customers fault. Most likely they were pulling these from the burn pot and saving them in a bucket then a bag of pellets was dumped in the bucket and the whole mess was dumped in the hopper. Those came out of the stove and found their way back into the stove somehow. They didn't come from the bag.
 
I'm surprised that you guys cannot figure out that this is the customers fault. Most likely they were pulling these from the burn pot and saving them in a bucket then a bag of pellets was dumped in the bucket and the whole mess was dumped in the hopper. Those came out of the stove and found their way back into the stove somehow. They didn't come from the bag.


That is Hogwash, those things are too large to come from the burn pot and I know my customer would not do that!
Scott you are incorrect
 
That is Hogwash, those things are too large to come from the burn pot and I know my customer would not do that!
Scott you are a menace
"The truth? You want the truth? You cannot handle the truth!"

Whatever. Believe what you will. Ok, so lets say they came from the mill... A mill I have been to and seen in operation. How do you suppose those got in the bags?
 
"The truth? You want the truth? You cannot handle the truth!"

Whatever. Believe what you will. Ok, so lets say they came from the mill... A mill I have been to and seen in operation. How do you suppose those got in the bags?

I had another customer that put one bag of pellets in from a different brand and it was like a creasote BOMB! All his parts were covered with sticky creasote that almost ruined his fairly new pellet stove. It took us 8 hours to clean the auger, hopper everything with Acetone to get the stove to work again. Explain that?

Are those the pellets you are selling in your store now? LOL That explains it. :)
 
I do not sell pellets but I have seen bad batches or a bad bag here or there even with very good name pellets. It happens. That's all.
 
I had another customer that put one bag of pellets in from a different brand and it was like a creasote BOMB! All his parts were covered with sticky creasote that almost ruined his fairly new pellet stove. It took us 8 hours to clean the auger, hopper everything with Acetone to get the stove to work again. Explain that?

Are those the pellets you are selling in your store now? LOL That explains it. :)

Don, you didn't answer Scott's question....."How do you suppose those got in the bags?"

I highly doubt they were in the bags.
 
That is Hogwash, those things are too large to come from the burn pot and I know my customer would not do that!
Scott you are incorrect

I have to agree with Scott. I have done some stove service/cleanings for other people that have had "problems".....I'm still amazed at what people will do.

And those are clinkers....they look EXACTLY like like the ones i had in my Astoria one time.

Wait a minute....I have it! Inferno is pre-burning their pellets, and throwing a handful of clinkers into the bags as a freebie!!
 
Technically, your right. It did come from the bag. The wood fiber used had too high of levels of sodium, potassium or chlorine which caused the ash fusion temp to reduce the temp at which ash will bind together. It can happen when temps reach about 1100::F, which will not happen under normal conditions. When any of these elements are present in the fire box the ash can fuse together at temps as low as 500::F, which is normal in the fire box.
This is one of the first chapters in the NFI training manual.

So the user removes them while performing maintenance. It is a doh! moment and a trained tech ought to explain this to them to keep them from doing it again. It happens. They get placed in a bucket and then someone accidentally dumps a bag of pellets in it and then tosses it back on the hopper. Even worse!...and this happens a lot and would be something that would scare me more is that they go to start the stove it feeds, feeds and feeds...no ignition, the pot over flows, they dump the burn pot back into the hopper cause it's just pellets right? Well it may not have been lighting cause there was a big clinker in the pot, they dont see the clinker cause its buried by pellets...this gets repeated a few times a whola...clinkers in the hopper. There is a danger though that there may be some smouldering pellets from the failed ignition...those can cause a hopper fire.

You say the customer has a Hudson River. Well, that's a good stove now that Sherwood is making them but they are typically sold via the internet and or B grade dealers. Not that far of a fetch that they got the stove outside of a reputable dealer, got no instruction, obviously they are making a lousy pellet buying choice too....

Don, you have a chance every time you do a service call to educate people about better, best practices, it worries me that you would be duped so easily. My number one rule I tell my employees when servicing a stove, and I mean no disrespect, listen to what the customer says BUT DON"T BELIEVE THEM.

"oh, we JUST had the units cleaned a few weeks ago" - but the unit is filthy
"oh my husband works with HVAC and knows all about these things" - but is unemployed at the moment
"we only buy the very best premium pellets" - every bag says premium
"we had the stove professionally installed" - but its not installed correctly
"we would never dump clinkers in the hopper" - but their son in in charge of the stove after school

All of these statements may be entirely true but if you got it covered....why are we here.

As a tech our job is to be a detective not a lemming.
 
I suggested that my customer screen the pellets and that solves most of those type problems.
 
Is there any way during the pellet making process some pellets got hung up and started to smolder and then got loose and continued into the bag...where the smolder was then suffocated? Just throwing it out there....have no idea if its a possibility
 
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