Hi All,
New pellet stove guy here, finally got one this summer after talking about it for five years. Its a Kozi KSH-120, bought used from a local dealer. I did the install myself (with a lot of help from lurking on this forum) in a standard 1,200 sf ranch house, in the unfinished basement (yes, I read all the threads advising not to do this) and finally started running it this week. Some observations:
Vent pipe - Despite using high-temp silicone sealant on the inside and outside of my vent joints, I still had smoke at startup. It always went away as soon as I had a good fire but the general leaking concerned me. I put my CO detector right next to the stove for several hours and it never registered a thing, so I kept it running for a couple days just to see what happened. After about the third startup, the smoke problem seemed to have largely gone away. Does the sealant need to get "cooked-in" before it is fully effective or something? BTW, I used Selkirk Metalbestos 3". Out to a clean-out-T, up six feet, 90 degree to horizontal, two feet to termination. 15' EVL.
Getting heat upstairs - Yep, all you guys who said that heat wouldn't just “find its way upstairs” were right. However, its not impossible. Either a fan at the top of the basement stairs or running the forced air furnace blower fan at intervals seems to help a lot. Keep in mind that I'm used to a cold house. We rarely set the thermostat above 65, even in the dead of a Wisconsin winter. With temps in the upper 30s at night, I'm holding 68 in the house. We'll see what January brings.
Pellet usage - “Figure a bag a day” is what everybody told me, and I bought accordingly. So far, I'm using about 1.2 bags per day. Cold weather will require more. I have 2.5 tons in the basement but will obviously need more. Still coming out ahead of LP though, and I don't have to pay those crooked bastards this year. I paid on average $200/ton for a mix of Marth and Dejno's pellets.
CO is nasty stuff - While checking my vent outside on the first run, I leaned over the termination cap to see if any ash was blowing out behind, and got full breath of that stuff. It about knocked me on my butt! Be careful and get a CO detector!
Thanks to everybody on this forum. It is a wonderful resource.
New pellet stove guy here, finally got one this summer after talking about it for five years. Its a Kozi KSH-120, bought used from a local dealer. I did the install myself (with a lot of help from lurking on this forum) in a standard 1,200 sf ranch house, in the unfinished basement (yes, I read all the threads advising not to do this) and finally started running it this week. Some observations:
Vent pipe - Despite using high-temp silicone sealant on the inside and outside of my vent joints, I still had smoke at startup. It always went away as soon as I had a good fire but the general leaking concerned me. I put my CO detector right next to the stove for several hours and it never registered a thing, so I kept it running for a couple days just to see what happened. After about the third startup, the smoke problem seemed to have largely gone away. Does the sealant need to get "cooked-in" before it is fully effective or something? BTW, I used Selkirk Metalbestos 3". Out to a clean-out-T, up six feet, 90 degree to horizontal, two feet to termination. 15' EVL.
Getting heat upstairs - Yep, all you guys who said that heat wouldn't just “find its way upstairs” were right. However, its not impossible. Either a fan at the top of the basement stairs or running the forced air furnace blower fan at intervals seems to help a lot. Keep in mind that I'm used to a cold house. We rarely set the thermostat above 65, even in the dead of a Wisconsin winter. With temps in the upper 30s at night, I'm holding 68 in the house. We'll see what January brings.
Pellet usage - “Figure a bag a day” is what everybody told me, and I bought accordingly. So far, I'm using about 1.2 bags per day. Cold weather will require more. I have 2.5 tons in the basement but will obviously need more. Still coming out ahead of LP though, and I don't have to pay those crooked bastards this year. I paid on average $200/ton for a mix of Marth and Dejno's pellets.
CO is nasty stuff - While checking my vent outside on the first run, I leaned over the termination cap to see if any ash was blowing out behind, and got full breath of that stuff. It about knocked me on my butt! Be careful and get a CO detector!
Thanks to everybody on this forum. It is a wonderful resource.