New Vistaflame VF-170

Hey all,
We had our Vistaflame VF-170 installed this week. I found a lot of great info on the boards here, really appreciate all the knowledge. I felt a lot more comfortable making an informed decision after spending some time here reading.

5 tons of fuel are stacked on the other side of the basement. Being our first year burning, I bought 5 different kinds to try them out. Mix of blends and softwoods.

We went with a basement install since we wanted to keep our fireplace open for wood fires, and I use the basement as a workshop area and I froze my butt off last year down there (we just moved into the house Dec 2011)! Will it heat the entire house? Hard to say, but I'm sure it'll at least take the edge off. It's a big unit (enough btu/hr by spec), but there are always the issues of moving the heat around. Here are the specs:
-2200 sq ft colonial, ~15 years old
-Basement is about 1200 sq ft
-10 ft ceilings
-cathedral ceilings in master bed/bath
-two story foyer, basement door exists near edge of 1st floor ceiling transition to foyer
-walk about basement, 50% concrete 50% framed
-unfinished basement, ceiling NOT insulated
-2x4 framing
-forced air furnace. two registers in basement, no return in basement

It's NOT a great heating profile, although it's not as bad as an old farm house either. As you can see, we put the stove in the corner of the basement near the water heater. It's the back corner of the house, North side, on the framed side, but opposite the actual walk out door.

It wasn't particularly cold out the other night (about 50), but I ran the stove just for the heck of it to try out my new toy! Put it on the lowest setting, had the basement up around 80, main floor at 76, and I don't have a thermometer on the 2nd floor but it was WARM. Obviously when it's actually cold, that'll be the real test.

My HVAC guy is coming next week to spec out adding a return register above the stove. I may hold off on this work until I see how well (or not well) the heat moves by just running the furnace fan as is, but I need the oil burners cleaned in the meantime anyway.



I'll post back once we've really had a chance to run it in some cold weather to see what I've got for reviews on the pellet types, as well as how well it's heating the area. I'm also interested to see how many pellets it burns through on the various settings.

Cheers,
Jon from CT

PS. For what it's worth, we paid $1999 for the unit.

smoke show said:

Looking good!

The surge protector police will be along shortly....

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A surge protector and a battery backup!

jtakeman, any idea on who makes the plenum kits? I did some googling and didn't come up with much.

As for insulating the basement, that's the plan eventually. As money and time allow of course. Can't say I'll ever do anything about the floor though.

The Maxx and the VF-170 look like exactly the same thing. I'll check with the place I purchased from to see if they have any thoughts on getting the kit installed on my stove.

Went and put a surge suppressor on it right away, although it was just one I had lying around. I should probably invest in a good one.

Well, it was 27 degrees out this weekend so that was the first real test of the stove. I had it loaded with Timberheats. I picked up a few bags of that to burn on the shoulder, and I noticed a big difference between them and the New Englands I was burning before. Way less heat from the Timberheats.

Anyway, turning on my forced air fan it kept the basement at ~80, main floor ~72 , probably high 60's upstairs although I don't have a thermometer up there. The master bathroom has bad circulation so it was cold in there. I had to run the stove on 3 while trying to warm the house up (until the basement gets nice and toasty really), found that leaving it on 2 was enough to keep the temp pretty consistent in the low 70's on the main floor.

This is so much better than heating with fuel oil......

How well did VF-170 heat the house last week when it was pretty cold? I'm looking at doing the Maxx-M in my basement.

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It's kept up in with temperatures in the teens. Burning about 3 bags per day. When it dropped below 0 for a few days last week, I had to turn the oil furnace on. The VF-170 might have kept up, but I would have had to run it on the highest setting. Unfortunately, I had it on 3 where I've been running it and by the time I got home from work the house was hovering around 63F and it probably would have taken too long for the pellets to bring it back up to 70F. So, had I prepared better I could have cranked it up, burning who knows how many bags per day maybe 4 or 5, and not had to use any oil. I'll try to do that next time if we get some really cold temps again this winter.

Overall, I've been very happy with it. I run it on settings 2 through 4 depending on the temperature outside. Have never tried 5. What I find is that between 3 and 4 it barely burns any additional pellets, so I'm not convinced that settings 4 and 5 really throw that much more heat than 3.

I have been finding that my electric bill is up by about $50/month. That's running the pellet stove, and leaving my forced air fan on 24/7. To me, that's a fine trade off for not using any oil (as long as the temps stay above 10F or so).

I did end up cutting a return, probably 18x20", into the basement. It's not strategically located near the stove or anything, just on the main return trunk in a spot that was convenient to cut into. With that return the house stays pretty well balanced. Only super cold room is the master bath.

I just dipped into my 4.5-th ton this weekend. Trying the Energex this time. Burned 1 ton O'Malleys, 1 ton New England, 1/2 ton Green Teams, and about another ton of whatever crap Lowe's had. Honestly the Green Supreme's (20 bags or so) and Green Teams (30 bags) burned pretty well for me. Timber Heats were ok. Inferno's were garbage.

I'm thinking next year I'll be ordering 7 tons. I only got 5 this year, and I've had to pick up extras from the local stores about a half ton at a time with my 1/2 ton pickup. I think if I just got 7, although it will take up a lot of space it will get me through a full winter.

Hope that helps!

Hmm, good suggestion! I'll see about picking up some more this weekend, just in case. I've got 3 tons left right now, which should take me through Feb and March but I'm not sure about April.

I'll think about it. My father has a 3/4 ton, so if nothing else I could borrow his for a day to shuffle some around and I'd feel a little more comfortable about that.

Thankfully there is a distribution facility just a few miles down the street from me in the next town over.

Update from October 2013: The stove heated our house all winter, and kept us nice and warm.

HOWEVER, I had the auger motor seize up on me sometime in the spring. I can't remember exactly what the date was but I remember that it wasn't that cold out at the time, so I'm guessing it was in March. I had run ~6 tons through the stove at that point. It was replaced under warranty. I should clarify, it's not the DC motor but the gearbox/transmission/torque_converter/whatever_you_want_to_call_it that connects to the auger shaft that froze I think. Since it was under warranty they just replaced the entire part.

Well now it's October and the auger motor seized up again. I've only been running the stove for 3 weeks so far this season, and I think I ran it for about a month after the replacement last year. Probably well less than 2 tons on it. This is pretty disappointing. While it's still under the 2 year warranty..... I'm getting a bit concerned that I'll be replacing this $270 part every year. What gives?

After the first failure I started running the hopper empty once a week so that I could vacuum out any fines that had accumulated at the bottom. The dealer suggested that it could be fines working their way into the gearbox that was causing it to seize. Apparently, it made it even worse!! (that's a joke, I don't really think this made it worse)

Just wanted to share my experience. Has anyone else with a VF-170 had this issue?

Todd is that the heat kit from the Maxx-M? My dealer told me that it wouldn't fit on the VF-170 because it was slightly different.