crazy vibration from englander 25-pdvc *newbie*

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joelswork

New Member
Nov 9, 2010
86
central TN
ok, trying to figure out why this old stove isnt heating the house so i decided to give it a good cleaning. This is a second hand unit given to us by a friend. It has been out in his shop for a few years and is now installed in our living romm replacing our cheap wood burner. the wood burner would keep up with the cold, if we could keep up with it....this unit is not cutting it so far!

I scraped the burn pot out, revealing a few extra air holes which i thought would help! vacuumed out everything imaginable, scrubbed, rubbed and polished. started it back up and now we have this crazy low frequency rumble that i think is matching a increase/decrease in flame intensity. i thought a dump truck parked in the living room, this is pretty intense.

throw out some ideas!
 
joelswork said:
ok, trying to figure out why this old stove isnt heating the house so i decided to give it a good cleaning. This is a second hand unit given to us by a friend. It has been out in his shop for a few years and is now installed in our living romm replacing our cheap wood burner. the wood burner would keep up with the cold, if we could keep up with it....this unit is not cutting it so far!

I scraped the burn pot out, revealing a few extra air holes which i thought would help! vacuumed out everything imaginable, scrubbed, rubbed and polished. started it back up and now we have this crazy low frequency rumble that i think is matching a increase/decrease in flame intensity. i thought a dump truck parked in the living room, this is pretty intense.

throw out some ideas!

Get a gasket for the combustion blower it could be time to clean the impeller and cavity it sits in.

Also describe your venting starting at the stove all the way to and including the termination cap.

Then tell us the heat setting you were using, the low burn settings, and the controller mode the stove is being run in.
 
seems to be doing it at lower heat settings. I turned this beast up to 9 for heat and 9 for the blower and she's a rocking now! I think I just knocked some stuff loose that might have caused some temporary unbalancedness (nice word choice, I know). I tried the service line at englander but it keeps ringing busy. It would be nice to know if that is a warning sign for something coming up. I have just about every spare part you can imagine for this so it would just be the down time.

As for venting, it has 3" that goes into the 6" from the old wood stove, tripple walled through the roof capped with whatever the simpson kit comes with for wood stoves (it is clean though). Cold air return is just 6 ft long, screened and ready.

I installed it the night before I left out of state for work. Worked good that night, the Mrs kept complaining about the lack of heat while I was gone. Got back to 28 outside and 54 inside with the blower and heat set on 9's. The flame was very lazy and I noticed this morning that the pellets were falling off the sides of the burn plate while still whole and red. We got some new pellets (the old ones were old and quite heavy with moisture as I noticed comparing the two) but still didn't have the heat I was expecting. I ned to go over everything again but the temp inside the house dropped to mid 30's while I cleaned what I did. Maybe mid week with a few new parts and a good wire brush too! We went with the pellets because of some friends recommending them and we are adopting a couple boys with down's syndrome, we thought there would be more heat with less dust thus helping their respitory systems a bit.

She was burning 3-4 bags a day while I was gone and that kind of expense ain't gonna cut it. It was lows in the 30s but still, this is only december...we have a couple more months of this to go. Any good pellet buys in tennessee?
 
Get the gasket and make sure the combustion blower is clean.

How large is your house, how well insulated is it, how tight is it?

You are going to burn a lot of pellets at full out.

That stove can't heat the outdoors.
 
Mine did that really bad when we started it up 3 1/2 weeks ago. Sounded like we had a jet airplane landing or taking off. LOL (yes it was that bad).
It is not as bad as it used to be, if I sit in the other room watching TV we barely notice it now. But sitting here right next to it, it has a low vibration about every 20/ 30 seconds that I can feel through the floor.
 
joelswork said:
.....so i decided to give it a good cleaning. This is a second hand unit given to us by a friend. It has been out in his shop for a few years........I scraped the burn pot out, revealing a few extra air holes which i thought would help! vacuumed out everything imaginable, scrubbed, rubbed and polished.....

As it has been said MANY times on this forum, approx 80% of stove problems are directly related to a dirty stove.

Not to say that you did a poor job with the vacuum, but used/second hand pellet stoves are usually that way due to poor maintenance by the previous owner....they stopped using it when they decided "the stove is no good!".

My suggestion is to forgo using it for 1/2 a day (on a saturday), and tear the stove apart.......remove both blowers and clean all carbon or dust/dirt, remove & clean both augers & auger flights with steel wool, empty & vacuum the hopper, remove the firepot and related parts and do what we would call an "annual" or "end of burning season" cleaning. Plan on ordering some new gaskets from Englander to make sure the job is done right.

All of this is mentioned in the owners manual under maintenance.
 
I had the same sort of issue with mine last winter. I narrowed it down to the exhaust fan making the nasty rumble. Instead of taking it apart because I didnt have the gasket to reassemble it with, I just used my shop vac on "Blow" and I cupped my hand over the air intake and gave a good 2-3 minutes of a air while tapping on it lightly to loosen any "Stuff". Then I removed the flue pipe and sucked out any stuff that had been blown loose. Let me tell you it was pretty dirty. Assembled it back together and no rumble. So I think it was the fan blades had goo/dust/etc etc on them and that made it out of balance and thats why it vibrated.

Since then I do a "Big" cleaning every two weeks. I also do a normal clean on Saturdays, but my BIG clean is more serious. Which means I disassemble the flue at the stove, blow air through the fans both intake and room air, vacuum the crap out of everything, bang on the stove with a rubber mallet to knock loose any ash and then vacuum the inside of the stove completly. Mine has removable baffel plates down in the bottom on each side of the burn pot. I remove those and vacuum that area out also.

Because I also go out of town for a week at a time for work, I need my stove to stay up and running and heating the house. So preventative maintainance is huge on these stoves. The wife can now fix auger jams and do the minor vacuums, but other than that its all me.

One other thing that I do is screen my pellets/corn. I made up a screen filter that fits over my hopper that I pour the corn/pellets through. It has made a huge difference in Jam or no Jam for me. Last fall I was 10 hours from home and the wife called to say she had a auger jam. So I explained how to remove the auger and fix it. She called later to say she pulled out a 3" long chunk of sheet metal from the auger tube. the filter would have caught that. Live and learn for me.
 
Thanks for the advice guys! I am planning on taking this thing apart Thursday to do an extensive cleaning (the mrs will be gone and thus not freeze). We have our adoption interview tomorrow so I'm not gona tear into it today!

Thanks
 
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