Blower air doesn't smell right to me. Making me sick.

I just bought an Appalachian 52 Bay wood burning insert. It's my first insert and I'm really excited for it to get cold out!

This is a used insert. It's only a year or two old, but used nonetheless. I've fired it up twice since I installed it and I do not like the smell of the air coming out of the blower exit vents. It made me sick both times, and I think most people would feel the same about it if they experienced it.

I cannot find the source of the smell. I've taken out the blower motor and fan assembly and it doesn't seem to be coming from there. It's hard to tell about that though because it's blowing cold air in my face and the smell probably seems more intense when the air is heated. I've also looked around in the plenum area with a flashlight and I do not see any foreign objects. But I can only see maybe 50% of the air path there are many hidden areas.

I'm getting nervous that this could be a normal smell for this stove. Maybe just the smell of the heated outside of the firebox that the blower air passes by. I hope that's not it because it's pretty bad and I don't think I can live with it. It's not a smell that I'm familiar with, but I would have to describe it as more sweet than sour, bad, nauseating, and possibly similar to a melting or overheating smell of some kind.

Have you guys found that the air coming out of your blower vents smells pretty much the same as it it did on the way in? Or that it takes on an oder in transit through the insert's plenum area?

Thanks for the ideas. It actually smells like the burning of a man made substance like paint maybe, but this unit less than 3 years old and looks absolutely brand new. So I'm leaning away from the re-paint idea becuase it's so new.

The dead critter, urine, or feces idea sounds like a possibility. I also wonder if some little kid stuck a ball point pen or something like that in the vents. I can't see anything though. I'm going to try using a small mirror to look around in there some more. I might also experement more with the blower motor to make sure the smell isn't originating there, and I'll try the compressed air idea. As a last resort I'll uninstall the insert and steam it out. I'll post my results here.

I will let you all know what happens with this. I just hope it's not a permanent smell!

A friend of mine offered to let me use his videoscope which should allow me to look into all parts of the plenum area for some kind of foreign object. I don't know exactly how it works, but I should be able to use it tomorrow.

I was able to get into the plenum area with an ACDelco videoscope and look all around everywhere in there. I found a little bit of dust, and nothing else. No foreign objects at all!

Although I couldn't smell much of a bad smell coming from the blower assembly itself, I decided to dissasemble it and take a closer look. After taking it apart as much as possible I blew it (the motor) out with a high power air hose and a ton of stinky dust-like particles came out. The more nooks and crannies I found to blow out, the more dust blew out. The dust smelled pretty much like the bad smell I had smelled earlier, which after more olfactory investigation was similar to a smouldering wood smell.

It's been quite warm out and I haven't burned another fire since then. But when I do I'll see if blowing out the motor solves the problem.

Thanks for all your ideas.