One ton in: Harman P43

I have had my P43 installed since august and have since gone through my first ton. Thought I would share my experiance for those interested.

I self installed with an out and up(5ft) with a jet cap. I did this because of the desire for a natural draft. Thuse far, in temperatures from 0f to 45f i can pull the plug and the stove will not smokeback into the room (no oak). We will see if it can maintain a natural draft at -30...

Even if it can, I may decide to add an OAK as i can feel a slight draft with the stove on. I didnt originally due to the extream cold(-40 or lower) that can cause issues with OAKs (freezing closed, cold air causes increased pellet usage, ext) but i may add one to try it out now that i know that i have a draft issue.

I am heating 1600sqft of a 1930sqft home with the stove, two upstairs bedrooms are closed off. The downstairs is a relativly open floorplan with the kitchen/dininngroom seperated by a 15 wide arch from the living room, The livingroom has two story celings and the kitchen/dinningroom is single story. The stove is right next to said arch on the livingroom side, allowing heat to flow easily into the dinningroom (indirectly) keeping that room within 1 degrees of the living room and the master upstairs within 2 degrees of the living room. Diagram attached.

I have the thermastat prob on the diningroom side of the arch, about 3 feet from the stove but behind a wall for a more acurate reading. I have been using Room Temp auto up until today. I just switched over to room temp manual because last night the stove when into shutdown and finished its exaust cycle, almost 10 seconds after final shut down was when the auto sequence started back up! No point in making the stove cycle so often for no reason so now that it is 0f outside i have it on manual mode. Room temp has been great, it keeps right at the desired setpoint and with the fan on high the heat moves around the 1600 sqft well. I will experiment with fan on medium now that it is consistantly cold and the stove isnt cycling. But really high isnt THAT loud. I do turn the TV up a notch or two. But it is quieter than a box fan on medium.

Also, I do a 5 degree setback at night and while people are out. from 70 to 65. This is a good balance for me on saving pellets while set back vs time to reheat the area. as is often mentioned, pellet stoves do not function like a furnace, while my boiler is 124k BTU and can easily heat the house up from 60-70 while it is -20 out in less than an half an hour, any stove cannot provide that kind of BTU. even the P68 is nearly half as capable as my cheap boiler. I find that a 5 degree setback (manually input on the knob on the stove as i have not installed a programable thermastate) allows the stove to throttle back a little and makes for a very short recovery of less than an hour for the whole house, and only about 10 min for the livingroom.

The stove itself has been a breez. The pellets i have been using are VERY dirty though. These are my first pellets so i wouldnt know any better if it wasnt for this forum. But my P-43 needs a full cleaning every 12 bags! I mean, the ash pan was overflowing at 15 bags! I will use the rest of these pellets then switch over to Blazers and will report the differences with those.

As far as that full cleaning goes, it takes all of 15 minutes. I use a shop vac with a drywall bag and a canister filter. No soot escapes. I power down the stove, wait about 30 mintues for the flame to die down. When there are just a few embers that are down in the auger i scrape them out into the ashpan and then start cleaning from the top down, this keps the exaust fan running pulling out the majoirty of the ash as i brush. I scrape the heat exchanger, then brush every inch from the exchanger downt he walls. Finally i pull the ash pan and dump it outside into a bucket. I vacume out whatever was left in the bottom of the stove and then close the doors allowing the exaust fan to shut down. Next i pull the exaust impeller guard, brush all of that down and reinstall. I have not yet cleaned out my flu pipe because i can see down it when i pull the impeller guard. It looks fine. Although i will likely clean out the flue pipe with a brush on my next full cleaning seeing how ashy these pellets are.

Anyways, i then wipe down the stove glass with glass stovetop cleaner and then vacume out the igniter, the airwash and as i scrape the burnpot. I have found the harman tool to be lacking when truly cleaning the burnpot so will pick up an oversized screwdriver for next week. The harman tool will clean it eventually, but it takes some effort. Then i put it all back together. And pull the fines box cover, i could probubly wait to clean out the fines box for once a month as it is never very full. Then i fill her up and turn her back on. The stove is still warm to the touch when i get flame back!


I have been very surpised at how easy the P43 has been. Everything from the install which i did myself to the cleanings has been very straightforward. Not to mention the heat it throws! So far i have not used the oil for heat, only for hot water. Not too bad for a "baby" on the harman line in 0 degree temps! I cannot imagin needing a monster in the 60k BTU range if you had a 2000 sqft house built within the last 15 years in most of the lower 48. If negative temps are a novelty to you(as in you only see them once a year for a two day streatch, or even less, then save the $1000 premium on the huge stoves.

It has been very easy living with the P43 as our primary heat source. It is not quite set it and forget it like a boiler or furnace, but i have no problem at all with the 3 minutes a day total it takes to add pellets twice and give the burn pot a quick scrape. I dont know if I would be loving pellets if i had to shut down the stove every day in order to give it a full cleaning. Everyone has their priorities and budget, and i cannot speak for other stoves, but if you are going to use a pellet stove as a primary heat source, you could do worse than the P43 with its good heat output, smart heat control, and easy maintinence and cleanings.

DAKSY said:

Hmm. I do the same & it takes me 40 minutes, including the fines & brushing the vent pipe.
You don't mention if you cleaned out the igniter cavity & punched all the airflow holes clean...

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40 minutes if you count the cool down. from when i start scraping to when I turn it back on my wife won't finish a 30 min episode on netflix (22 min run time usually) and I do not drill out the air holes, but i do clean out the igniter cavity.

what is the easiest way to drill out those holes?

alternativeheat said:

With my P61 I over cleaned at first but now I go 10 days to two weeks at a time. But much depends on pellets, I've burned some dirty ones too ! You will love the Blazers or any DF pellet, any good softwood pellets that reads very low ash like the AWF Super Premium White Pine at less than .25 ash contend. Or a good hardwood that is relatively low ash. Try to get high BTU pellets of 8500 or better. Your Harman will make heat out of most any pellet though but mid winter burns are coming and it's mighty cold where you are at !! The better pellets save work.

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absolutly! i was kinda shocked the second time i cleaned it. first time was after 8 bags because i was going out of town for three weeks. my neighbor (a wood burner) offered to brining in my mail and keep the stove topped off. he was thrilled to find out he would only need to drop a bag in ever day or two opposed to coming by before work, after work, and before bed to keep the fire running! anyways, he used up 17 bags in three weeks and oh boy was there a lot of ash! first thing i did when i got home was turn off the stove and clean it. i had to push the ash down in order to pull out the ashpan! I was shocked because of the legendary "1 ton ash pan" of the P-series and the measly 17 bags it had burned. turns out that ashy pellets will still overwhelm it.

I got 4 tons of these so called Superior Pellets when i bought my stove because the Blazers were back ordered two months. and shure enough, i didnt get the blazers till I had been burning for several weeks. next year will be Blazer only. just need to finish off these Superiors first because i dont want to switch to nice clean pellets and then go back to ashy ones later... ignorence is bliss here i think.

DAKSY said:

I use a piece of 12 ga romex bent 90 degrees...

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Thanks, i will make sure they are all clear next time.

Thanks for the hints on the air holes everyone!


Oh, as far as pellet usage. I was go through a single bag a day when it was in the 30s. and now that it is around 10 degrees F i am going through 1.5 to 1.75 bags a day (temps are swinging from -8 to positive 20 day to day. but usage has been lower than expected. last night for example it was hanging around 0 all day, then it was 0 all night, and i only went through 1.5 bags. I was expecting to be maxed out by now, burning through 43k of fuel an hour (2.5 bags a day) but i still have more horsepower. at this rate I hope to continue to heat the house with the stove until -20 temps, which is about average for fairbanks. We get a month plus of -30 or colder, but i am willing to use the oil heat to supplement when we get that cold.