Harman XXV Fan, Feed and Overheat Problem

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slheinlein

Member
Oct 30, 2007
111
Southern NH
I have a Harman XXV, Freestanding stove I bought in 2007. Everything has worked great until recently and had an episode this morning that was disturbing. Here is what happened...

I live in New Hampshire and its currently 5 degrees outside. Stove is in Room Temp mode with dial around 70 degrees.
I have recently done a thorough cleaning, including the ESP, fill box for fines, distribution blower removal / clean, new auger motor, etc.
This morning, I notice the Distribution Blower shut down, even though the fire is quite large. The Distribution blower light on the control panel is off.
While checking this out, I notice the fire getting even larger, much larger than normal and the stove is constantly feeding pellets. The feed motor light is constantly on with no breaks. Pellets are feeding to the point they are pushing off the edge of the firebox.
The smell of the stove was hot so I was getting concerned and turned the dial from Room Temp to 'off', hoping it would start a normal shut down. However, when the dial was 'off', everything shut down including the combustion blower. All lights on the control panel are off except 'Power'. So unless i wanted my home to fill with smoke, this wasn't an option.
Once i put the dial back to room temp, the feed motor started along with the combustion blower, however, distribution blower still has not come back on.
I tried to move to Stove Temp, hoping it would slow things down since the temp was very, very hot by this time. Nothing changed, feed motor kept running along with combustion blower but no distribution blower.
This went on for a few minutes until I finally decided to open the hopper lid and physically take out all the pellets in the hopper. The feed motor did stop when the hopper lid was open.
Without any pellets the fire eventually got smaller, stove cooler and things started to work properly again. Its in stove temp now and running properly at the moment. I"ve put in a few pellets to see if it keeps going.
I've noticed a few times the distribution fan stop for some unknown reason and it ALWAYS happens when the stove fire is very large. It appears that when the stove gets to a certain temp, something happens to the electronics. Any ideas??
 
I don't know your stove, but it's possible that your distribution fan is overheating and it probably has some sort of built in thermal protection that shuts it down. I would think that if you had kept it running, the whole stove would have overheated and shut down on its own... I would hope so anyway!! The first thing I would do is check that fan for dust buildup or something impeding airflow through the heat exchanger.

Good luck, hope you figure it out!
 
So you took the distribution blower out to clean or the combustion blower? Dist blower would be unusual to remove for cleaning, IMO.

My GUESS, at this point, is that you may have tweaked the ESP enough to cause erratic behavior as you are describing.
 
So you took the distribution blower out to clean or the combustion blower? Dist blower would be unusual to remove for cleaning, IMO.

My GUESS, at this point, is that you may have tweaked the ESP enough to cause erratic behavior as you are describing.

Sorry, yes, I removed the combustion blower out and cleaned. I might start with replacing the ESP. I figure it must be it or the control panel circuit board.
 
Sorry, yes, I removed the combustion blower out and cleaned. I might start with replacing the ESP. I figure it must be it or the control panel circuit board.

Yes, ESP is a good start in this case.
 
Keep us dated and good luck. AK
 
I replaced the ESP on Wednesday so this is day 3 and so far the stove is working perfectly. If it continues to run like this for another week, i'll assume the problem is fixed since the problems were only intermittent. Looking back at the problems, it appears the control board thought my stove was cold. thus, the distribution fan shut off, feed motor running constantly and everything shut off when I turned the stove off. Either the ESP was giving this information to the control board or the board itself freaked out. Hopefully, its the former.
 
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