quadrafire castile

I would guess as long as your stove is burning well with an active flame, the pellets are to blame.

Can't comment on your door gasket, but yes, pellets from differing manufacturers can behave differently.

I ran about ten bags of Energex pellets last season, and I found that when I shut down the the pellet stove, there were a few times that the remaining pellets in the burn pot would still be smoldering after my stove went through its entire shutdown sequence. Ultimately, this resulted in a smokey basement a few times. I attempted to adjust the feed-rate(Decreasing), but it didnt't seem to make any difference.

I have had consistent sucess burning Lignetics with my Quadra-Fire Castille.

yes it can. Due to not enough air being pulled into the fire pot.

I would have to say it's the pellet. If the gasket was in there wrong enough to affect performance then it would prob not pull enough vacuum to start the stove up.

massmudman is right. If you really screwed up the gasket, it wouldn't feed anything. It's just pellets with a higher ash content. How long does it take to build up that 1/2 pot of ash?

Sean,

If the gasket is not properly sealing then it can affect the burn and rather drastically, it would not prevent your stove from lighting in most cases nor would it cause the stove to shut down in most cases.

It would cause a pile up in the burn pot. What happens is the combustion blower sucks air through both the burn pot and the leak caused by the faulty gasket seal the vacuum switch while extremely sensitive will not see this as a loss of vacuum as it is a very small disruption as far as the switch is concerned. However it reduces the amount of air through the burn pot the combustion fan will still move a fixed amount of air only less will go through the burn pot.

It is also possible that it isn't your gasket job that's the issue. The same thing happens if the the air path is disrupted by a gasket issue around your burn pot if one is there, if the burn pot holes get plugged, the receptacle that the burn pot sits in gets ash in it, the combustion fan is covered in crud, or the exhaust paths are full of ash, or a door hinge or latch loosens up, etc etc ....

I prepared for my third year of use (Quadrafire Castille insert) by replacing my door gasket. To date, I haven't bought an ash vacuum cleaner, and the shop-vac I have was given to me as a Christmas gift from my wife (hangs on the wall, does a great job, but I haven't found a HEPA filter for it yet - just got the paper one it came with.).

Consequently, my cleaning regime involved mostly using the internal stove air system, while I brush the ash into the collection bin. This light abrasion caused the gasket to fray and look sloppy.

I went to the dealer to get the gasket - they guesstimated that I needed about 4 ft of gasket and cut a length from a roll they had. It was the tadpole design, and I studied how it was installed on the glass and reinstalled the new gasket just like the old one.

Now I have two items for your comment:

1. I have never had a smoky odor when using the stove before. Now I have a slight odor, which I kind of missed after we tore out the old fireplace for the pellet stove. It is very slight, doesn't set off any smoke alarms, and I think it only happens when it's lighting up. Any cause for concern, you think?

2. There's a 1"-1 1/2" clear bar across the bottom of the glass (not much schmutz on the glass), where before the glass clouded up all across it. I read about two schemes for the gasket on the glass for keeping it relatively clean, but my gasket went across the bottom before, and it's that way now, so I'm wondering what's up with that?

(BTW: With the original gasket, the part that went across the top of the glass was the adhesive "tadpole tail", without any gasket cushion attached. when they guesstimated 4 feet of gasket material, it was too short to put the entire "tail" across the top, so I split it lengthwise to fit.) I could figure out why they would design it like that, other than to protect the glass from direct contact with the metal housing, and the rattling it would cause.

Your thought, my friends?

G00k

I didn't think the gasket went across the bottom on the Castille. I am almost certain I have no gasket on the bottom of my door.

Depending on the serial number of your Castile, they made a change with the position of the door gasket. I purchased my Castile in the summer of '08 and the door gasket does not cover the bottom of the door. I'm pretty sure that previous models had no gasket on the top of the door. It was a change in their engineering and I remember I got the information directly from Quadrafire. I'm looking for the email I got from them and if I find it I'll post it.

My Castile insert has NO gasket along the bottom edge of the door. Mine is a 2008 model, and so far my gasket still looks like brand new. I never handle the gasket or brush it. I use the Ash Vac attachment and I barely touch the gasket edge along the area that gets a little ash on it. The installer told me not to handle the gasket and avoid using cleaners on it like Windex etc...

SN # 0071389649 & Below have gasket on bottom with just flat tape gasket in between frame and glass on top. SN # 0071389650 & Above are just the opposite. It takes 3.33 feet of tadpole gasket for Castile FS & ins, Santa Fe FS & ins and Contour.

balls of fire said:

SN # 0071389649 & Below have gasket on bottom with just flat tape gasket in between frame and glass on top. SN # 0071389650 & Above are just the opposite. It takes 3.33 feet of tadpole gasket for Castile FS & ins, Santa Fe FS & ins and Contour.

Click to expand...

My S/N is 0071389308, and has the gasket on the bottom and flat tape on the top - I would think all the ash that builds up on the bottom gasket would drop out through the gap and land on the lip under the door if there were no bottom gasket. The flat tape seems too thin to make a seal, unless the thought is that the air sucked into the bottom of the glass keeps ash inside the fire box. (?)

Anyway, I can't afford an ash vac right now.