MV Quadrafire AE insert Auto or Manual

Have had an MVAE for 5 seasons now, and every year - usually in coldest weather - I experiment with turning it to manual, with various flame heights / heat outputs to see if it makes much difference. Personally, I have yet to find a combination that is dramtically better than just running it on Auto, and I seem to use more pellets when on Manual, but have not measured that precisely.

The one thing about the MVAE on Auto that does bug me, and the reason I experiment with the manual setting, is that as the room temp approaches the set temp, the unit backs off on heat output. Our stove is in a relatively large room that is difficult to heat because of a cathederal ceiling, windows on three sides, sky lights and sitting over the garage. You couldn't design it for worse heat retention, and heating it comfortably was the reason we bought the stove in the first place. When temps are in the teens or below the room never quite gets to temp because of that behavior on Auto. I have learned to overcome it by simply programming the set point a couple of degrees or so higher, which gives me a reasonable solution. Where the Auto setting is great is in shoulder seasons, when heat loss is less.

I have a long hatred of the MVAE's thermostat, which I won't go into here as I've done so enough in other threads. But other than that and after switching to the lower wattage ignitor, I have to say it has been one fantastic stove.

I run my MVAE in manual mode almost exclusively. I believe that it burns a little cleaner with the constant size flame of manual mode as opposed to the varying flame size of automatic mode. Manual mode also maintains better temperature control during extreme cold weather.
I run the stove with a thermostat differential of one degree. I keep the flame height setting at 3 or 4 and the heat output at medium high. When extreme weather sets in, I sometimes have to max out both flame height and heat output settings to keep up with heat loss from the house.
It may sound as if I am pushing this stove, but it keeps the first floor of my house (approximately 1200 sq ft) at 70 all winter.
There have been threads in past seasons of people complaining that they couldn't get enough heat out of their MVAE. They were running with the control setup restricting the stove. Increasing fire height (combustion blower speed) and heat output (fuel feed rate) will increase total output of the stove. You have to be willing to burn pellets to make heat.
Enjoy your stove.

johnhimm said:

I run flame height 0

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I've never run mine that low! I think the lowest I have gone on flame height is mid scale. But then again, our climate is a bit colder than yours.
We have had dull overcast skys for a while now. Consequently, even with the mild temperatures we have seen I'm averaging two bags a day.

I run mine on manual, because it gets really dirty fast on auto. I also have my flame height at 0, I had to turn it down because the flames were starting to put burn marks in the glass. I'm burning hamer's at the moment and they seem to burn hotter. When I start burning the turmans I need to turn it up to plus 2.