Anyone have a spare ignitor for a mt vernon AE? se mass/ri

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oldmountvernon

Minister of Fire
Oct 27, 2011
604
SE Mass
mine just went ya i know i should have a spare. Just ordered 3 online Hopefully i can get one tomorrow but figured i would throw a post up in case
 
mine just went ya i know i should have a spare. Just ordered 3 online Hopefully i can get one tomorrow but figured i would throw a post up in case
sorry i don't have one but is there a way to run the stove in a similar manner to Harmans room temp manual? Where the stove goes to a minimal burn when the thermostat is not calling for heat, therefore never going out?
 
the AE has auto clean so shuts down then wont re light but i could run it on battery power that stops the autoclean. but im all set found one and have spares ordered now. Lesson to pellet stove owners :p
 
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I like to have 2 on hand,just for that reason.Did you order a 300 watt or the standard 500 watt?
 
I recently starting carrying a spare. When the ignitor goes out, can you not manually light it?
 
I have a MVAE. I think maybe I'd like to have a spare igniter. Can someone please tell me what the pros and cons of the 300w vs the 500w igniter beyond faster ingition. Where did you order it? Thank you.
 
I have a MVAE. I think maybe I'd like to have a spare igniter. Can someone please tell me what the pros and cons of the 300w vs the 500w igniter beyond faster ingition. Where did you order it? Thank you.

The 500W was the early design. They do not last in the AE stoves. The 300W is the correct ignitor for the AE.
 
While you are replacing the ignitor, you might want to make sure that you have the new ignitor harness. It has a fuse on both sides of the ignitor. That prevents damage to the control board if the ignitor shorts out. I considered the $30 cost a reasonable insurance policy for the value of the control board.
 
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I have a MVAE. I think maybe I'd like to have a spare igniter. Can someone please tell me what the pros and cons of the 300w vs the 500w igniter beyond faster ingition. Where did you order it? Thank you.
The old AE ignitor is 380. The only difference is the lower 300 watt ignitor is for wood only, it also has a longer expected life. No change in ignition time for wood pellets.
 
While you are replacing the ignitor, you might want to make sure that you have the new ignitor harness. It has a fuse on both sides of the ignitor. That prevents damage to the control board if the ignitor shorts out. I considered the $30 cost a reasonable insurance policy for the value of the control board.
harness? This is news to me. Do you have a part number or a reference?
 
harness? This is news to me. Do you have a part number or a reference?
I got mine on ebay for $30. That's gone, but I did find it here for $38 plus shipping.
It replaces the original harness. There is a fuse on the control board, but there were several threads that talked about damage to the control board when the ignitor shorted. Apparently Quadrifire changed the design some time after my stove was manufactured. I decided to upgrade in hopes that, if I had an ignitor failure, it would protect my control board from damage.
 
mine just went ya i know i should have a spare. Just ordered 3 online Hopefully i can get one tomorrow but figured i would throw a post up in case
I got my spare here. $39.35, Free shipping, and they were fast.
 
So this thread got me to thinking. My stove is 3 years old next month. It runs in manaul mode on high 24/7 with a flame height of +5. The only time it shuts down is for the autoclean cycle (approx evert 3 hours) and during my weekly cleaning. The ignitor only lights the pellets and then shuts off. The convection and combustion blowers run constantly. Given that Quadrafire improved the ignitors does it make sense to spare anything? What are the odds that the ignitor will fail before some other part? Just thinking?
 
So this thread got me to thinking. My stove is 3 years old next month. It runs in manaul mode on high 24/7 with a flame height of +5. The only time it shuts down is for the autoclean cycle (approx evert 3 hours) and during my weekly cleaning. The ignitor only lights the pellets and then shuts off. The convection and combustion blowers run constantly. Given that Quadrafire improved the ignitors does it make sense to spare anything? What are the odds that the ignitor will fail before some other part? Just thinking?
There are two things to consider; probability and consequences. While your experience says that a failure is improbable in the short term, we all know that it is inevitable in the long term. Then one has to consider the consequences of that failure. Will it be an inconvenience or a catastrophe. For most of us the pellet stove is backed up by another heating system so that the consequence is the additional incurred expense of the alternative fuel, plus the inconvenience of not having the pellet stove's services for the time it takes to get a spare.
Since it would cost me a gallon of gas to get to the nearest Quad dealer, I opted to have a spare igniter on hand (had it shipped, free shipping). The additional cost to me would have been the added fuel oil I would have burned for a few days.
YMMV
 
Agreed but what if the auger, convection or combustion motor were to fail? Wouldn't you be in the same situation? After all the ignitor is just a piece of resistive metal with no moving parts. You could tie up quite a few bucks in spare parts. Just my thoughts.
 
Agreed but what if the auger, convection or combustion motor were to fail? Wouldn't you be in the same situation? After all the ignitor is just a piece of resistive metal with no moving parts. You could tie up quite a few bucks in spare parts. Just my thoughts.

Yes, the same logic would apply to each of those components... weigh the cost of the spare part against the "cost" of the downtime.

The ignitor has no moving parts, but rapid thermal cycling is at least as likely to cause mechanical failure as moving parts.
 
Agreed but what if the auger, convection or combustion motor were to fail? Wouldn't you be in the same situation? After all the ignitor is just a piece of resistive metal with no moving parts. You could tie up quite a few bucks in spare parts. Just my thoughts.
It really comes down to the same decision process. Given the probability of failure, can you tolerate the consequences of not having a working stove? Does the cost of that consequence exceed the cost of components?
For the costly components such as control board and blowers, on my MVAE, I would not tie up that much resource.
For moderate cost components such as an auger motor and vac switches, on my PDVC, I took advantage of some bargains I found on ebay.
 
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