wood pellets not generating enough heat

Hey Brokk, hope ya get her tuned, gotta be a setting for sure,curious, did you grab a meat thermometer? like to see what kinda reading your getting at the output tubes.Heres a pic of my 8 year old Enviro EF3, this is on high after 15 min burn time,on a decent grade pellet(EnergeX)not my Highest temp recorded but its right up there, Crappy ranging at 165 F, Best rating at 400 F (EnergeX), curious what temp your running, that should tell if its working right, or just too much Heat Loss, Good Luck.
P.S These Thermometers are less then $15 Walmart, nice to have for Verification of Temp.

Brokk, the 10 inch Probe is sitting all the way in one of the Heat tubes,and it appears to make a difference in the reading if the 24 inch steel cable is coiled or uncouled,i suppose it cools down the further its stretched out.This is how i've set it for all tests to keep it consistant.

Good to see you adjusted your flame, below the tubes is fine. Be more concerned with flame tuning than height as in achieving a more yellow flame, with minimal torching.

Using a meat thermometer isn't a good way to get a good reading, I'm picturing you holding the tip in front of the tube for a couple of minutes. The probe shank is cooling down the reading as well, picture how a meat thermometer is used. If you could mount the shank parallel to the tube, one can get a better reading. The thermometer that gutterboy has would be better, even though the probe in the tube is not the way to measure air temp. For $15 I would run out and buy one, if I didn't already have a good digital (Fluke brand). With a digital one can see temp changes with different damper settings (the way I tune the flame). Also one can verify the calibration of a digital with an ice cube. BTW; one side of the stove will be hotter than the other.

Are you taking your temp reading from the hot side of the stove?

What temp do you get with the fan speed on low with the feed rate at #3?

sure sounds stinkin low to me Brokk,i'd be over 200 F at any given time as soon as the probe gets within 6 inches of the heat tubes,no wonder your freezin man, hope ya get it straightened out before winter officialy gets here,a can of sterno would prob yeild the same temp of 120 Degree's
(Yikes)
I'm at about 145 F on the lowest setting possible without going out.Hope that gives you an idea how to Guage it better,.

My stove on the highest setting will come very close to bringing water to a full boil. If you can touch the top of your stove directly above the flame then your stove is not performing. My flame is downright violent on the highest setting. The first time I saw it on that setting it actually scared me. The heat that comes out of the front of my stove is very hot as well on the highest setting. You cant keep your hand directly in front of the tubes for long.

You should have gotten some increase of heat with a lower fan setting, sounds like your fan speed control is not working and your always on high.

Are you noticing a flow change adjusting the fan speeds?

Brokk said:

Very much so. I don't think the fan is always on high. I have 5 settings and I can tell the difference between them (even hear the difference). You can even turn the fan off, which should result in a safety switch kicking the fan on within about 12 minutes. However, when testing this out with the support people, my switch didn't kick on until around 28 minutes and I tested it twice with the same results. Again, this is showing me that the unit is not generating as much heat as it should. Since it's not generating as much heat, it took more than twice the normal time to reach the heat level needed to kick on the safety switch. When I asked support about it, they just made noises about some variance can be expected and not to worry about it since it did eventually come on.

Brokk...

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Your stove has 3 fan settings not 5 and 4 feed settings. See 'specs'. http://www.homeclick.com/web/catalog/product_detail.aspx?pid=176643

An air output of 120° no matter what you do and what the inside/outside temperatures are, is impossible.
Are your clean out covers are missing?

I would have to say at this point your trolling.

The idea of comparing one stove to another.....as far as output temperature of the hot air tubes...is complete folly. I have explained why a bunch of times. Any time you spend doing that is wasted.

Weighing the pellets in another thing....although such calculations could be made by the bag...or by a larger quantity....try 10 pounds, etc.

What you have to do is to try and burn as many pellets as possible per hour, and then calculate what the output should be - and then determine if you think your stove is doing that. Figure conservatively....like:

If you can burn 4 lbs per hour on high - and figure that stove may not have the highest efficiency in the pack, then figure on 5,000 BTU output per pound, or 20,000 BTU per hour. That is the size of a larger kerosene heater.....would that do the job?

Please do not use the information in this thread as reference. I have a pellet stove in an INSULATED 1.5 car garage and I can heat it after MANY hours with the unit on full blast. It is very possible for your room to have the same heat loss as my garage...again, because this has an insulated ceiling, walls, good windows and an insulated door.

If you really want to suss this out further, I suggest the following:
1. Wait for a string of days when the approx high and low temps are similar.
2. Use the stove for a number of hours at full blast - for instance, for 8 hours - and record the amount of pellets used per hour, and the approx. temp in the room at a distance from the stove.
3. Calculate the estimate of output using the lbs of pellets burned per hour times 5,000 (a conservative rough calc)....for instance if you are burning 4 lbs per hour, use the figure of 20,000 BTU.

OK, now you have a baseline. Go to the local rental store and rent a good Kerosene heater for a day. Most of the larger ones are rated somewhere around 20,000 BTU per hour.

Run the rented heater in the same room and see if the results are similar.

If so, you know what the situation is. If the kero heater does a much better job, then it's time to ask more questions.

I think I'd run the stove wide open and see how long it takes to go through one full bag. It doesn't sound like the stove is getting very warm, so I don't think there's any harm in doing this, but it will give you a better idea how many lbs/hr you're burning. Trying to do this with smaller quantities will likely be inaccurate. I'm still not buying into the "it's the room" theory, something is not right with your stove. Your room should be hot with that thing running at its highest setting, and you should not be able to touch it for more than a fraction of a second...

Take some pictures while you have it all apart.

There should be a cover on each side of the burn pot on the back wall.

Yes I'm referencing the picture, there is a fan trim and the three fan settings.

You called the 140 as a hot spot and said 120 as the temp range for low fan and #3 feed before.

Webmaster, the problem here is the stove, not the house. Read post #42. The tube output needs to be hotter than 120° and is important. Every tube output that I have read is higher than 120°. On my lowest feed rate I get about 125-130°. Your explanations on the subject that I have read, I don't agree with.

Lance1 said:

Webmaster, the problem here is the stove, not the house. Read post #42. The tube output needs to be hotter than 120° and is important. Every tube output that I have read is higher than 120°. On my lowest feed rate I get about 125-130°. Your explanations on the subject that I have read, I don't agree with.

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Reality does not care whether you and I agree!

The test which I gave is a reasonable, but rough, way of seeing what the output of the stove is. This idea of using:
1. Different thermometer types
2. Different Stove models
3. Different Input air temps
4. Different locations
5. Different heat exchanger types, blower outputs, etc.

as an indicator of the stove total BTU output is foolish. In fact, IMHO, using any temp output from hot air will not tell you much....or at least nothing close enough to be of value.

The heat from the pellets can only go a few places. It is either coming into the house, going up the flue, or not being burned (high smoke and creosote output would be the result of that). We can guess that if the vent system is not getting plugged or a lot of smoke is not exiting, then the heat is either coming into the room or going up the flue.

It is important to get a baseline...using some kind of other appliance...as to what another heat source does in the same room. That, along with lbs per hour burned over time (and the results of both) will say a lot.

My guess is that a LOT of pellet stoves "in the field" are not running at anywhere near the claimed efficiencies (for many reasons). But, even taking figures with some fudge......

7500 BTU (after moisture) per lb of pellets.
66% efficient= 5000 BTU into the house per lb.

If getting a kerosene or LP heater is too much trouble, another experiment would be to use two plug-in electric heaters. These would have to be on two separate electrical circuits. The total output of those would be about 11,000 BTU or a little over 2 Lbs of pellets per hour.

I'm not saying it isn't fun to "take your temperature"....just that it does not help in this case because we still don't know the "x" factor of what amount of heat that room actually needs.

Flame sure looks right. A Flame like that has to be burning the pellets, that's for sure.

Before you got the pellet stove how were you heating this room?
Just curious.

That is a nice looking flame. OK, now the data looks more reasonable. From the cut away that I saw of your stove, I don't think you have to be concern with a pre-mature cutout.

I was at Wal-Mart today and didn't see that thermometer either.

Brokk said:

Measuring the heat output temp is good because it allowed me to see when I was being sucessful in tuning the flame and feed rate.

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This is the best way to tune.

The actual wattage output on small heaters is usually lower than claimed. Doesn't make for a good BTU comparison, unless you have an amprobe.

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Stove air temp matters and is useful data, to those of us that know how to use it.