Holy Ash in my Englander 25-PDV

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jjones139

Feeling the Heat
Dec 9, 2013
283
Orange County, NY
Just looking for some advice to combat the excessive ash I've been dealing with while burning Presto Logs. Stove produces great heat, works and functions flawlessly. Here are my current settings:

Bottom factory settings are 5, 5, 1
Presto's bag dates 11/13/13, 11/19/13

Stove was completely cleaned including leaf blower trick this past Sunday.
Any help or advice would be greatly appreciated!!!!
 
You can play with the air, check for leaks etc but in the end the only answer is scoop scoop scoop!
These stoves dont clear ash well. Some pellets are worse than others. You can search this forum for modification people have done to help but you will void the warranty.
 
In the meantime I've changed the LBA to 6 and will also try 7. I also thought about drilling the burn plate holes slightly larger?? I've ruled out the possibility of leaks.....
 
In the meantime I've changed the LBA to 6 and will also try 7. I also thought about drilling the burn plate holes slightly larger?? I've ruled out the possibility of leaks.....
I did that and it made it worse! You get less velocity of burn air blowing through the larger holes. I have tried a bunch of mods to my burnpot, a lot of them resulted in less ash but the stove suffers in effiency. By best advice would be to just leave it alone, I can burn the cheapest pellets available and still only scrape the pot once a day!
 
Changing LBA to 6 did very little if anything so now I went to 7!!! I'm open to anything to counteract the mega ash!!!
 
I put everything in my original post. Presto Logs!!
 
A putty knife or spatula. Open door, scoop it out, close door. Very easy. As previously stated these stoves dont clear ash as well as others.
 
That's what I've been doing, but thought just maybe there would be a few tweaks to lessen he ash. Other than the excessive ash my stove works GREAT [emoji106][emoji4]
 
That's what I've been doing, but thought just maybe there would be a few tweaks to lessen he ash. Other than the excessive ash my stove works GREAT [emoji106][emoji4]

I heat the house with coal . I have your stove in my shop. I tried for years and really never was able to combat the ash build up. As stated making holes bigger actually worsens problem. Tried patially blocking large holes on each side of burn pot below burn plate. Maybe helped a little. Englander rep posted on this site that this problem is just due to design/emission reasons and you just have to live with it. Not really a biggy scooping. If I were ever to get another I would get a Harmon. No build up with those.
 
I appreciate the input. Fortunately for me I was given the stove brand-new from a friend who unfortunately was going through a divorce. This is all new to me since I've only been burning a little over than one year so everything is a learning lesson. This site has been fantastic and a great source of information!!
 
I'm not sure if pres to logs are softwood but sometime you should try grabbing a few bags of softies... My stove loves them very little ash in the burn pot hard woods fill it up after a while.. But I think hardwoods burn hotter in my stove
 
I spent about 9 years heating my house with one of those stoves. I had pretty good luck
with mine, although it WAS maintenance-intensive.

Depending on pellets, I could clear ash/clinkers anywhere from once a day to three times
a day. With some pellets, the ash would be climbing out of the burn pot in only 12 hours
or so! Methinks it's the pellets.

The very best pellets I ever got were some red oak from Pennsylvania the first or second
season I burned pellets. Bone dry, burned clean, burned HOT, and left a very small, hard
clinker in the burn pot to deal with once a day. I never found anything else quite like those.......

I'm guessing it's your pellets. Grab a small fireplace shovel or somesuch, scoop out
the ashes, leaving some coals, and toss the scoop outside in the snow. If you did it
right, you won't light the neighborhood on fire, and the pellets will reignite from the coals.
Easier done than said.

-Stretch
 
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