Englander 10-cdv is not heating as advertised

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unkuthz

New Member
Hearth Supporter
Nov 13, 2008
13
Kansas
I need some help from the guys at Englander, its a bit long but it should tell you whats going on,


I recently purchased a 10-cdv (11-11-2008) for my 2200 sq ft home because my old Winrich crapped out on me.
So I go to Sutherlands look several stoves over, I'm thinkin multi-fuel would be a good one to have.
It says efficiently heats 2200 sq ft on the box.
I have to light it, no biggy.
Has a good stirrer, decent fire pot and hopper.
So I take it home, make some changes to the height of my vent pipe.
1 ft of 3" horiz to a 3" t (with clean out)then 3" vert for about 2 ft then turns to an 8" liner through my chimney Id say no more than 24-26 ft up ( 2 story home with 9' ceilings).
Pulling in crawl space air for outside air.
I take the box off plug it in and run it thru its shutdown before cutting the straps, good to go.
take it inside hook up the vent, pull the stirrer (running pellets to start), plug it in, set stove to pellet, filled it with pellets to the top and light it off.
Set it at 5 and 5 as instructed for burn off of oils and paints etc.
So its lit now and I used a couple of the large fire starter sticks and a small hand full of pellets because it takes 3 min before the auger starts to turn and feed pellets.
And the fire is very impressive compared to the old stove, bright yellow in color and blue at the air holes.
Once the hand full of pellets had burned up and the stove was pretty much running constant, I noticed that it seemed to have way too much air ( I had some control on my old stove with an air register on the side), so much the fire hardly ever reached the auger hole pretty much stayed entirely in the fire pot. I dont recall the brand of pellets but they are Premium Oak.
So I let it run for a while and after about an hour or so the door began to smoke a bit burning off the some paint. Ok its finally getting hot. By now the room air blower had kicked on but has more air coming from one side of the stove than the other and also from the 2 holes under either side of the ash tray in front of the door.
My living room in which the stove sits is about 24X15 and Im sitting on the other side of the room waiting for it to heat up because we made sure the furnace wasnt going to kick on so the room was cooling off a bit.
It still looked like it had way too much air but the fire had a good bright yellow color, there were a few "coals" in the bottom of the fire pot, so there wasnt any build up of pellets. Still not much of an actual fire tho, mostly contained to the fire pot.
It seems I do need to check the stove for level because 75% of the pellets go to left side.
About 10 last night it still hasnt heated the room up, so I kicked it up to 9 and 9.
I know it heated up some because it finally started to burn the oils and paints off and stinkin up the place.
Ran it all night, got up this morning looked in the hopper and the level of the pellets had not reached the cone yet so it really didnt use much.
Left it running when I left for work but it had not heated the house up. I checked the upstairs 66 and the downstairs was 65 in the dining room adjoining the room where the stove is. The outside temp was 45.
I got home from work about 2 pm and the house was 69 upstairs and down with an outside temp of 55 stove is still set at 9 and 9, so I called CS, it took a couple of tries but I finally got thru.
Talked to a guy there and he had me put the stirrer back in and set it back to corn even tho I was running 100% pellets.
He also had me change the settings to 5-9-1 on the low feed , low air, and air on.
I will check the stove in the morning and the temps but it doesnt seem to be putting out the heat it should. I have added a small Vornado fan to the side of the stove to help push some of the warmed around to reach the further distanced rooms.
I have checked to see if the room air blower changes when changing the settings from 1 to 9 with heat setting on 1.
The only thing I really noticed was a change in frequency coming from somewhere on the right side of the stove but the air from under the lip didnt change too much, very little if at all.
So thats the situation, now what can I do to improve the performance of this stove?
Right now I am very disappointed with this stove for $1500 that is only kind of heating my home on a relatively warm fall day.
I cant complain about CS as they were very polite and very willing to help get me going.
Any help is greatly appreciated.
 
got home this morning and checked everything
I have been running the stove using Premium Oak pellets .5% ash and .5% fines
the stove is set on corn with the stirrer in and on
the house is 68 upstairs and down with a 44 outside temp, maybe the 5-9-1 settings helped a bit ????
will there be quite a bit of air rate change going from 1 to 9 on the room air setting?
with the feed rate on 9 the auger is 6 secs on and 6 secs off
it doesnt look like the rpms are changing on the convection air blower when changing the settings not sure if its suppose to?

any help is greatly appreciated
 
Seems like you're experiencing the same issues I had with my Englander (Summers Heat) 55 SHP-22L, I purchased at Lowe's.
Same company same issue. It still is puzzling to me why it happened.

Anyway, I returned my stove to Lowe's for an exchange as they suggested. Was very apprehensive about the new one working also. Did the pre-check when it arrieved and hooked it up as the previous stove, no different. The new one is working fine. Old one was manufactured in 6/08 and the new one in 8/08.

Heating a 400 sq.ft. room and upstairs bed room and office for a total of about 1,000 sq.ft. Last night on 1-2 setting kept the rooms at 72 degress, with an outside temp of 25. I've been experimenting with the low feed and low air settings and last night they were back to the suggested 6-4-1. I did have the down stairs door open to the rest of the house which is about 2,500 sq ft. But, that is serviced by a steam heat oil fired system, set at 62 degress. You probably guessed by now it's and old drafty Victorian.

My suggestion is exchange that stove and get a new one. I have friends with your model stove and they heat 1,500 sq. ft with no problem.

Just my two cents.
 
Maybe I am missing something?
How many lbs of pellets are you burning per 24 hours?
With that stove, you can probably figure 6,000 BTU (at most) into the house per lb of pellets burned. One easy way to compare is that is about equal to a plug in electric heater. So, if you are burning 2 lbs per hour - or over a bag every 24 hours, then you are burning at about the rate of 2 plug in electric heaters.

Only by looking at the amount of pellets burned can a decent guess be made of what the appliance is doing. I am not familiar with that stove, but it is possible that the multi-fuel design takes some points off the efficiency. Either way the above should be close.
 
My best guess on pellet consumption is about 60-65 lbs in 24 hours, minimum.
A little about the house
built 1918 2 story brick covering the first floor stucco on the second and gables
9' ceilings stucco front room and drywall in the rest of the house
Pella windows throughout
its not the tightest house but I never really noticed it being "drafty"
it has a natural gas hvac unit for each floor and both are near bottom of the efficiency scale

I would very much like to be able use this stove for primary heat on my first floor and supplement with the hvac on the second.
Im not asking the world out of this stove but rated at 2200 it should be able to heat at least 1200 nice and cozy.

Once again any help is greatly appreciated.
 
Forget about ANY ratings that give a square foot number. One house can use 5X as much heat as another per square foot.

At the rate you mention, you are producing about 18,000 BTU per hour or the size of a medium Kerosene heater or 3 plug in electric heaters. If those would heat your house in this weather, then the stove should also.

https://www.hearth.com/econtent/index.php/wiki/You_and_a_BTU/

The solution is to figure out settings which can allow you to burn more pellets - perhaps 2+ bags a day.

If you suspect you are burning the pellets but not getting the heat...that is another thing. That is why comparing it to a known source like electric plug-ins is sometimes useful - in figuring out if it it the stove or the house...
 
The only reference I have is the old pellet stove I had been using
Unfortunately the old stove would not run any faster than #2 heat setting because it would load up with pellets and put itself out
On that setting it would heat the house to 72 upstairs and down at 40-45 outside temp with ease.
It was an old Winrich stove and I cant seem to find any btu ratings on that particular stove just for some numbers comparison
I realize each home is different and the same stove will heat each home differenctly as well

I guess what I'm wanting to know is is the the best the stove will do
Im assuming that having the heat setting on 9 will give me the most btus with the fuel im using
the faster the fuel is fed the more heat it will produce
I also assume that the low air burn and low feed settings will only take affect when the heat settings are on either 1 or 2, is this right?

Right now the house is 70 upstairs and 71 downstairs with an outside temp of 64.
I have also noticed that the fire has made it out of the fire pot and is reaching the height of the auger now but no further
 
This stive was made Jan of 2006
maybe there were some defects somewhere in the stove back then dont know about that
 
Like I said in an earlier post. I had a no heat stove also.

Lowe's took it back and exchanged it for another, same model. There was nothing different about the stove or hook up except this one produces heat. Don't ask me why, I still can't figure it out.

I was in denial also about why it wouldn't heat. Had to be something inside that was not made correctly. It's such a simple design it had to heat. Talked to Englander techs several times about the issue and made all kinds of tests and adjustment and still no heat. I'm happy with the new one, heats like it is supposed to, go figure, just return it!
 
im trying a 50/50 mix with corn today.
Ive already called Sutherlands and they said that they would take it back no problem.
It seems to be puttin out some more heat now but i didnt plan on running corn in it, this season anyway.
Im on nights and have got to get some sleep but its definately going back.
Thanks for the input.
 
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