Calm our fears!

becasunshine said:

You are planning to get an Outside Air Kit (OAK) installed, aren't you?

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Yes, I am. I have a venting question as far as that goes, but I'll bring it over to my own thread rather than hijacking this one!

SmokeyTheBear said:

Bad air flow can cause the ash not to get ejected from the burn pot. When was the last time a real heavy duty vent and ash trap clean out was done?

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Smokey, that's exactly where we went first with this batch of pellets, last year. I clean the stove about every other day- open it up, vacuum it out top to bottom, empty the ash pan, clean the glass, etc. - the typical daily stuff. Also, because we have a direct vent (good ground clearance) I can take our Shop Vac outside and vacuum out the vent. We have an extra long hose on the Shop Vac. I can feed that hose back through the vent all the way up into the stove from outside of the house. I do that once a week faithfully.

One thing I have for sure found out about our Napoleon- it loves to be clean. Mike from Englander and I did some pounds per hour/BTU/house size calculations online last year, I think, on a cold winter night. The thread's probably still up here somewhere. I let our hopper burn until just about empty on the optimal feed setting. IIRC, it took around 30 hours to burn a 40 lbs. bag? Also IIRC, the Napoleon puts out about 42k BTU on its optimal feed- don't quote me, I'd have to go look it up. The HVAC t-stat in the hallway just outside of the room where the stove is installed was registering in the low 70's? I think? Anyway, we were both commenting on how well the stove was performing- and it does, when we keep it clean. It sure doesn't like to be dirty. In order to get the performance that we know we can get out of this stove, I clean it like a woman possessed.

Anyway, when this batch of Hamers came into the house burning dirty, the first thing I did was clean the stove (again) and vacuum the vent pipe from outside (again) all the way up into the stove. When the Hamers continued to burn dirty, we tore down the stove, cleaned the innards, checked the gaskets (can't remember if we replaced them at that time- I keep gaskets on hand for just such an occasion, so if the gaskets were worn, I'm sure we replaced them.) Hamers continued to burn dirty. We replaced the door gasket, which was admittedly worn. Hamers continued to burn dirty. I called the stove shop, where we bought these Hamers on a bulk buy, and at that time I found out that *everybody* was complaining about this particular shipment of Hamers. It was such a known problem that the stove store replaced all of the bags of Hamers that we'd already burned and with which we'd had problems, and all of the bags of Hamers we had left to burn, and all of the bags of Hamers that we had left on the account. Thank God we'd not picked up the entire bulk buy of Hamers, or we'd be in a mess in terms of space, etc. The store didn't want us to bring back the bags of Hamers we'd already brought home. (We offered to bring them back.)

We decided to try to salvage what we could of those bags of Hamers during the shoulder seasons, when we aren't running the stove 24/7. My husband fabricated a sifter from a large Rubbermaid container that we already owned and some screen. He sifts out the fines and puts the sifted pellets in another Rubbermaid container. These Hamers are still burning a bit dirty but it's a lot better than the unsifted Hamers from this batch: we couldn't burn those at all. They'd clog the burn pot up in a heartbeat. Also, it kind of depends on which bag of Hamers we open. Even sifted, each bag burns differently. Some sifted bags burn fine. Some make enough ash to clog up the burn pot.

This experience was a real surprise for us. We'd burned Hamers quite successfully for two years before this experience. No idea why that batch was so different than previous batches. I wouldn't hesitate to buy Hamers again. Who knows what happened to this batch, and at what point in the process? Even though these Hamers are burning dirtier than any Hamers have ever burned before for us, they are still putting out heat. In the meantime, and in between, we've burned O'Malley's, Somersets and Presto Logs without incident.

Also, we broke the stove completely down and did a "big clean" before we put her to bed last spring. We started burning the Hamers right out of the gate this fall, trying to get them sifted and used up already- and of course, they came out of the gate burning dirty in a freshly cleaned stove. =/

becasunshine said:

I clean the stove about every other day- open it up, vacuum it out top to bottom, empty the ash pan, clean the glass, etc. - the typical daily stuff.

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Typical daily stuff???

You're touching it too much. Let it ride for at least a week. During heavy burn periods, I'll clean it once a week. Shoulder periods, every two weeks. But every other day? no way.

movemaine said:

Typical daily stuff???

You're touching it too much. Let it ride for at least a week. During heavy burn periods, I'll clean it once a week. Shoulder periods, every two weeks. But every other day? no way.

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Napoleons have a different burn pot. It's round and deep. We have an older model that doesn't have the intermittent pot clearing mechanism that Napoleon has put on later models. We have to empty the burn pot regularly. If I have to cool down the stove to empty the burn pot, I'll clean it while I'm at it. It's a great burn pot but our burn is different from most burns.

This product page from Woodland Direct briefly describes the "purge cycle" that Napoleon incorporated into the NPS45, the model that came out after ours. We have an NPS40.

http://www.woodlanddirect.com/Wood-Stove-and-Accessories/Pellet-Stoves/Napoleon-NPS45-Pellet-Stove

movemaine said:

Typical daily stuff???

You're touching it too much. Let it ride for at least a week. During heavy burn periods, I'll clean it once a week. Shoulder periods, every two weeks. But every other day? no way.

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P.S. Didn't mean to sound so terse in my previous reply about the burn pot- there's a lot of stuff going on here tonight. We could probably go a bit longer between cleanings but per above, our stove is so much happier when it's sparkling clean.

Last night, my beautiful wife said "It is going to be cold tomorrow, leave the stove on all day!"
When we installed the stove, she had fears of a fire, and asked me to shut it off when we left the house.
This is 22 months since installation! I suppose that the fears slowly faded, but last night was the first big indicator.

I now see, all the fears, will calm with time!

Bill

I tried to burn pellets in can while ice fishing they wont burn in a can so I don't know if they will burn in a hopper either, we had the same fear until our inspector said he used a pellet stove up stairs and down in his house, I worry more about the people that burn leaves in the forest. I don't know if I ever heard of a house fire caused by a pellet stove, make shure your insurance is ok with it.

home heater said:

I tried to burn pellets in can while ice fishing they wont burn in a can so I don't know if they will burn in a hopper either, we had the same fear until our inspector said he used a pellet stove up stairs and down in his house, I worry more about the people that burn leaves in the forest. I don't know if I ever heard of a house fire caused by a pellet stove, make shure your insurance is ok with it.

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There are house fires caused by pellet stoves on a regular basis.

Member Don2222 used to search for news stories and post the links and part of the story here on a regular basis.

Google is your friend when it comes to finding things here is one that Don posted on here: https://www.hearth.com/talk/threads...or-this-season-just-a-little-burn-back.76610/

Do a search on window pellet stove on here.