Englander CPM... heat output not what I expected?

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MikeP

Member
Mar 15, 2006
92
Northern NY
Bought a refurbed 49-trcpm from amfm energy, pulled the nc-30 out of its spot and have the stove hooked to the same lined chimney that the 30 has used for the last 3 years. With the wood stove this time of year it could bring the whole basement from 58-60 to the mid 70s with a start up fire and one average sized load of wood in 3-5 hrs. Now, the CPM has been hooked up and running pretty steadily since thursday evening the warmest its been down there is 69 which is right now, stove has been running on heat setting 7 or higher since this morning and ran on 9 from 3 oclock till now.

Now I really didn't expect the 2200sq ft rated pellet stove to have the same quick heating punch as the 2200sq ft rated woodstove, but something just seems off to me here.

Ok now for the basic setup info... Stove is in center of basement, 3" pellet vent pro adapter tee up 3' to 90 elbow 3" to 6" adapter connected to a oval Duraliner lined chimney straight up 20'. Pellets used have been 2 bags Pennington natures heat, 2 bags instant heat brand that i got at Tractor supply and a bag of Logik-e pellets. I know the penningtons get poor reviews but i know a person that used the instants most of the winter and liked them and the logiks are labeled as a super premium.
 
A few other important facts, basement is about 1200sq ft. I have checked the stove to be sure it's in pellet mode (was in mode 3) changed it to 1. I have messed alittle with the low fuel and air trims, bringing the air up to 6 did seem to increase the heat output but also made the chimney pipes hotter also.

It seems to me its burning the fuel pretty well, flame is active, its not sooting up, it just isnt' heating???
 
Is the basement finished? More specifically is it insulated?
 
More info about the basement would be helpful....wall type...insulation...ceiling height...etc.

Can you provide a drawing or picture of the room and how the stove is situated in it?

This unit will not produce as overwhelming "hot" heat as fast as the NC-30, thus it will not heat your space as quickly. However, it is more than capable of burning you out of 1200sq ft if you're moving that heat efficiently and set up is correct.
 
Stove ran all night on heat setting 6-8. Room temp dropped 1 degree. My current thought is all the heats being sucked up the chimey. Using my digital meat thermo, the outide of the pellet pipe is 162 degrees(so inside would be what??), slid in the air slots on the front, not touching metal 140 or so, touching the bottom of the heat exchanger plate 167. If I turn the air down to 3 it seems to skip feeding pellets every now and then and if I go to 2 it wont feed pellets at all. Vacuum switch problem???

EDIT Also there never seems to be a build up of pellets in the pot, as they fall even on higher heat settings they get consumed in a short blow torch type flame, I watched the video on the disc and have never had a full across the burn pot reaching to the top fire?



Basement is not finished, and I knew going in that the pellet stove wasn't going to heat as quickly as the 30, but running on 9-9 (1-4-1) and burning 2 bags in 12-14hrs and having the temp go from 67 to 69 just dosent seem right. If I burned 80 lbs of wood in that same time period in the nc-30 the basement would be 80+ this time of year. The frost is out of the ground, and the coldest I've seen the basement in the last few weeks, with zero heat has been 62. So not really a big heat load in my opinion.

For reference this year I used less than 3 cords of wood to keep the basement toasty, and took quite a load off the upstairs electric. Most I used was 3 years ago which was almost 4 cord, and that was the first year with the stove and less than ideal wood.
 
Hello Mike

What is the Top End of your stove on Heat Level 9?
You may want a stove that puts out more heat?

Not all pellet stoves are the same when it comes to heat output. There are patends on heat exchanger systems so good ones cannot be duplicated.

I have been testing top ends on stoves that I have rebuilt and Nothing comes close to the Travis Design which is very similar to the old Whitfields.

Most stoves I have tested with my very accurate Cole Palmer Digital tester and special High Temperature probe put out approx 200 Deg F on high. The Avalon Astoria I purchased puts out 600 Deg F on high! (Heat level 6)

BTW: My basement install does heat the whole 2,000 sqft house down to -6 Deg F
I do have a finished basement (No insulation in ceiling) and 2 registers in the kitchen and living room that feed 200 Deg F heat from the stove below.

See Thermometer and yellow arrow in pic below. It shows current heat output of 584 Degrees F
Click on pic to enlarge
 

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What are the bottom 3 buttons on the stove set at?

Think I made some headway with it today, mostly with help from a couple of your prior posts. As I posted earlier I felt the air was to high for the amount of fuel, and I saw where you posted running 3-5-1 on the bottom buttons on your stove. So, today after pulling the side panels, fiber board, and burn pot cradle, banging on the back vacuuming everything, and checking the vacuum switch hose, I restarted at 3-4-1, went to 4-3-1 and am now running the Penningtons at 3-3-1 at a heat range 5 or 6 and blower 9 and am getting more heat with these pellets than i was with the "better" pellets the last 2 days running the stove on 9

Basement temp at restart was 63.4 at 2pm, been above 70 since around 7. Still not ecstatic about it, but not to bad considering the penningtons don't get great reviews for heat output
 
biggest thing is to try to keep the LBA down as far as the unit will tolerate if you lower it too far it could drop the door vac switch and cause gaps in feeding, if it holds #3 then next se if you can drop it to 2, the slower the air moves through the stove the hoter the output will be but just dropping it to the lowest setting may not work in some applications. having it hooked to a "drawing" chimney will help you get lower but if its at default it could simply be yanking the heat out before it gets the chance to transfer in the exchangers
 
Before you do much else, try to find a bag or two of good pellets to see how much difference that makes.

When I first got my 10-cpm, I thought the room air blower was broken because it wouldn't kick on, even after the stove had been test burning for an hour outside. Turns out the blower was fine, and I had officially been introduced to a shoulder pellet.

In my stove, Somersets, Magic Spark, American Wood fibers, Greenway, and Prest-o-logs will all produce temps easily over 200 degrees coming out of the air slots on the front, with the Somerset and Magic spark around 250. Eco-flame, on the other hand, seemed to top out around 130 degrees or so.
 
I own a CPM and an NC. I will be the 1st to tell you that the Nuclear heat from the 30-NC will NEVER be had from the CPM.

Is a Pellet stove a great form of heat? YES. But is it the same radiant heat as a wood stove? NO.

Move the pellet stove upstairs where the heat is needed most and you will see a tremendous difference. (Is the OAK hooked up to the CPM?).
 
...I restarted at 3-4-1, went to 4-3-1 and am now running the Penningtons at 3-3-1 at a heat range 5 or 6 and blower 9 and am getting more heat....

Agree with what Mike said about not having the LBA too high....heat exchanger needs the heated air to stay in the stove a while. I have not gone above 5 on the LBA on any setting.

That said, I found the best settings were when the LBA was 1 or 2 notches above LFF. My normal settings now are 2-4-1, 3-4-1 or 3-5-1 depending on the brand of pellets.
 
Ex wood burner and long time pellet burner. I have to agree with the others, You just can't get the heat from the pellet eater like the wood hog! But its a steady heat, And it should keep the heat once you get it there. Try using the wood eater to get it hot and then use the pellet eater to feather it in.

I also agree with mithesaint, The Eco-flames don't crank the heat as some of the other mentioned brands. They are a lower density log to chip pellet. Hard to get heat from something with low density!
 
Hmmm.......no response from the OP.
Been pretty busy last couple days, but have figured out a few things that helped alot. Adjusted the hopper lid latch, also found it was sucking air across the hinge/back edge of the hopper lid (should there be a gasket across the back of the lid??) there is not on mine and it sucks air especially in the back corners. Doing this immediately improved the burn, the air was coming right down the feed tube and blowing the flame down or to the side. I also noticed there is a pretty good sized hole where the door latch adjustment is on the stove, this was not only leaking unwanted air into the burn area, but because of its location it was messing up the air wash and the glass was sooting/clouding over fast.

So the end result of this??? I started back with the factory settings 1-4-1, and was getting temps on 5 that i saw on 7 or 8 when I first started. Being hooked to a 20' interior lined chimney I still felt that there was to much draw, so I went to 1-3-1 and within ten minutes saw a 10-20 increase in the air temps coming from the vents. I tried 2 on the lba but it won't hold the vac switch on heat setting 4 so I went back up to 3.

I appreciate your guys help and suggestions. One other thing any advantage or disadvantage to running the room air blower on 9 all the time? Even when running on say heat setting 5. My assumption would be running at 9 would extract more heat but, what say the experts?
 
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