Email for Heatilator Eco-Choice?

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good luck getting a straight answer out of them.
i predict they will send you back links for dealers & techs for you to contact.

i can only speak to what my experience was. they tried to fob me off with links instead of answering my question about their manual.
i persisted and got an answer. but with added snark from whoever replied.
perhaps you'll have better luck.

i do understand them wanting their dealers to handle as much as possible though. usually they are the right people for it.

This is why we tell folks that the dealer needs to be the item really checked out when you go to buy a stove. The maker has dealers to handle the sales, service, and customer hand holding side of the business. They are not set up for nor do they want the liability of dealing directly with the end customer.

A great stove sold by a bad dealer is nothing but trouble for the customer.

A bad stove sold by a good dealer will get fixed one way or another.

Nearly all stoves can be made to work, but will quickly frustrate the crap out of today's just push a button crowd.

the reported efficiency ratings are taken from the stoves running on high. low is generally considered the least efficient for extracting heat from the fuel.

some folks who have gone to the nth degree insulating and sealing their homes have reported here that low works best for them as far as pellet consumption.
(actualluy one guy in particular )

no one has a great answer because there isn't one. the number crunching has far too many variables to create a usable, real world, can be used in conversation answer. if you like, you can go to the bank with "somewhere between 45% and 95%"....tell 'em I sent you.

i like running nonstop more than on and off. can't do it when it's really mild. but i'll run on mostly low when it's like it has been recently (20's to 40's) rather than on medium and cycling a lot.
but i run on medium the most. when it's really cold (minus 10 to minus 20) i'll sometimes run on high a while and set it back to medium.
the thing about running on low is everything gets just a little dirtier just a little faster.
this is why i'm always wanting it to just get good and cold out.

Hi Delta-T, don't ya just love the range.

One of the reasons for such a large range is that your stove is rarely properly tuned as far as combustion goes and then we have that wonderful cleanliness factor.

Usually it is harder to get a stove tuned in its lower firing rates, but with the correct equipment and enough adjustment room in the stove's combustion system it can be done.

hey, if you can tell me the exact mass and volume of air, exact mass of pellets,and the change in the intake and exhaust air temp, over the course of an hour, I'm confident I can get you a slightly better range...57%-93%

sorry, not trying to be snippy. i'm sure they have done all kinds of things. the problem is that no one wants to publish underirable numbers, so they do some fancy math and come out with some formula that is combustion efficiency and heat exchange efficience and come up with something else...thats sorta like total efficienecy

By the time the homeowner gets his/her wood pellets the pellets have been abused, misused, not stored correctly and in no way the condition they left the mill. I would love to see what the density and moisture content of different brands and retail locations is compared to the same pellet as it was bagged. Just saying

Eric

Delta-T said:

hey, if you can tell me the exact mass and volume of air, exact mass of pellets,and the change in the intake and exhaust air temp, over the course of an hour, I'm confident I can get you a slightly better range...57%-93%

Click to expand...

Ted,

Delta-T is just telling it as it is and since he was blasting at my retort on the range and we both sort of know each other. I don't consider Delta-T's blast to be personal or snippy.

The largest factor in effeceincy numbers on these devices is that absent a definition the numbers can be reasonable or off the wall.

From a theoretical stand point any device providing heat by fire is very, very inefficient and this is without considering the condition of the fuel or the fuel/air ratio or the devices ability to extract the heat from the fire or how clean the device is kept or the ability of the operator to properly adjust the device.

In short believe it only after you have done your own measurements. Sort of a variation on trust but verify.


ETA: Fuel variation is out of this world there is a 5 to 1 variation in the ash content of premium pellets alone.