Bad Pellets? How to tell

Pellet newbie this year, been burning for about three weeks. Kozi KSH-120 stove. All going well until today. I have been burning Marth premium hardwood pellets and established a baseline for how much ash is created, when to clean, etc. They produce a fine white ash and I have been cleaning the burn pot every two days.

Yesterday, I switched to Dejno premium softwood pellets to see how they burned. What a difference. The burn pot fills with a dark, hard ash after about 12 hours. Stove would barely produce a decent flame after this time and the exhaust had an unusual, acrid smell to it. All stove settings were the same as with the other pellets.

Is there usually this much difference between hardwood and softwood pellets or did I get a bad batch of Dejno?

Pictures of burn pot 12 hours after cleaning are below.

zeta--

Yeah, I cleaned the burn pot right after the pictures were taken and went back to the old Marth pellets. Its running like a champ again. I think I may have bad pellets from Dejno.

You guessed the picture, a 1941 Waco UPF-7. I wish it were mine, but its not. A family friend owned it since 1946. Recently restored and sold.

SparkyDog said:

If the bags are marked that they come from Athens ME would be a great clue in telling if you have bad pellets!

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They come from Kenosha, WI.

DiggerJim said:

Hardwood pellets tend to burn with less ash and need less air than softwood pellets. Softwood pellets have a much higher resin content which burns in addition to the wood biomass. That's what adds to the heat output and makes softwoods burn somewhat hotter (5-10% depending on brand).

So, try adjusting the air to see if that fixes your clinker problem.

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DiggerJim,

Thanks for the explanation on pellet differences. I did play with the intake air a bit initially, but probably not enough to make a big difference. I'll try again, but my gut tells me that these aren't worth messing around with. I called the dealer today and he said the Kozi stoves run best on hardwood and that they never use softwood. An e-mail to Kozi sort of confirmed this. "You can burn both kinds but softwood will require more maintenance" is essentially what they said. No kidding.

The farm store will not take them back so I posted on craigslist. 44 bags left for $175 if anybody in the Madison, Wis. area is interested. I have enough hardwood on hand to get me into January.

A follow-up to the original post about the bad pellets, I ended up mixing them 50/50 with my good pellets and opening up the combustion air quite a bit and it really helped. I have been burning the mixture for a couple weeks now with only sporadic problems.