Bad Hopper Seal?

[Eggy]

I've had my Harman Accentra Insert for at least five years and it has worked fairly reliably up until recently. A few weeks ago when I started it up for the season, I notice that the heat output was not what it used to be. I gave the stove a very thorough cleaning to make sure it wasn't just dirty. What appears to be happening is that there is not enough pellets being fed into the burn pot and the flame size is not very consistent. However I noticed when I push down on the hopper lid the flame got brighter and pellets appear to feed normally into the burnpot. So as a workaround, I now have an 8lb weight on top of the lid and the stove appears to work fine with that in place. Also, I do have one other problem that may be relevant... sometimes when I turn the stove off, it does not shut down.

The obvious solution would appear to be to replace the hopper lid gasket, however it appears to look perfectly fine. Could the problem be somewhere else? Low pressure switch? ESP Probe?

Any advise would be greatly appreciated! Thx

 

[F4jock]

I've had my Harman Accentra Insert for at least five years and it has worked fairly reliably up until recently. A few weeks ago when I started it up for the season, I notice that the heat output was not what it used to be. I gave the stove a very thorough cleaning to make sure it wasn't just dirty. What appears to be happening is that there is not enough pellets being fed into the burn pot and the flame size is not very consistent. However I noticed when I push down on the hopper lid the flame got brighter and pellets appear to feed normally into the burnpot. So as a workaround, I now have an 8lb weight on top of the lid and the stove appears to work fine with that in place. Also, I do have one other problem that may be relevant... sometimes when I turn the stove off, it does not shut down.

The obvious solution would appear to be to replace the hopper lid gasket, however it appears to look perfectly fine. Could the problem be somewhere else? Low pressure switch? ESP Probe?

Any advise would be greatly appreciated! Thx

I use a ten pound "volunteer" cat. Seriously, just replace the seal and see what happens. Quick and cheap. You can also "fluff" it with a wire brush and see if that helps. First, be sure you don't have any fines stuck under there. That would do what you describe.

 

[Eggy]

I use a ten pound "volunteer" cat. Seriously, just replace the seal and see what happens. Quick and cheap. You can also "fluff" it with a wire brush and see if that helps. First, be sure you don't have any fines stuck under there. That would do what you describe.

Thanks for the quick response. I think I will probably replace the seal, but just hated to replace something that looks perfectly fine. Would a bad seal prevent the stove from shutting down though? I have read posts that indicate this is a symptom of a bad ESP probe? Could a bad ESP probe cause the stove not to feed properly?

 

[Eggy]

I use a ten pound "volunteer" cat. Seriously, just replace the seal and see what happens. Quick and cheap. You can also "fluff" it with a wire brush and see if that helps. First, be sure you don't have any fines stuck under there. That would do what you describe.

I also just noticed in the Accentra manual that there is also a hopper lid switch. Where is that located? Could that be the problem?

 

[Eggy]

Well I finally got around to replacing the hopper lid seal yesterday. To replace the seal I figured I would take the lid off to make it easier to put the new seal on. When I removed the lid, I noticed a ton of sawdust build up in the hinge. I believe this was the real problem because there was so much sawdust in the hinge it actually lifted the lid in the back causing an air leak. So if you ever have any issues that resembles a pellet being stuck in the lid (or a six blink status light), you might want to check to make sure you don't have sawdust build up in the lid hinges.