Barefoot Pellets

Tested Barefoots in December and worked best of the bunch for me. Only issue I had was the auger making some screechy noise every here and then. I assume thats the hard pellet getting cruched against the auger tube. No of the other had the same. Makes me worry a bit about my auger, but I have other pellets for this season, will switch to Barefoot next season.

To my surprise Walmarts Nature Heat was almost as good as Barefoot in my mini test - maybe they switch bags with your Barefoots

Day 2 on the Lignetics - burnpot still ok. I assume I have a bad batch of Barefoot pellets or my stove just doesn't like them. Maybe as I work through the pallets this will change. Good to see a majority of others are having success. I went with these pellets as I saw many good comments on them here and the supplier was just down the road and delivered them with his forklift. Just my dumb luck I guess.

what was your batch date? My Barefoots that i'm having problems with are 7-10. This is my 3rd season with my pellet stove first year i burnt Lignetics no problems no clinkers, 2nd year i had penningtons and corninths some clinkers more cleaning but this year OMG !! We have to clean the burn pot twice a day because it builds up with so much hardened ash that the pellets wouldn't have anywhere to burn and they would start to climb the shoot. Even our glass gets pitch black right away .

KSERR - as noted above mine are dated 1/2010. What stove are you running? I am running a Breckwell Big E, purchased in 2008. I will try the moisture test but I wonder what other QC test could describe the problem we are having. Perhaps the forum can help. Pellet selection is a big and critical decision as we all know. When you have these types of problems it takes all the fun out of pellet heating. Live and learn as they say.

Check the density level. Also check the density of a brand that runs good.

You guys wanna bet the Barefoots are denser than what runs good in your stoves? Stoves without feed trim level adjustments don't like very dense pellet brands!

My stove is a St Croix EXP three years old. Yes my stove doesn't have a feed trim only on level 1 which is the lowest setting. Why does a dencer pellet cause problems.?Is it because they burn longer and if you don't have a feed trim it keeps on dumping pellets before they are completely burnt up? How do you check the density?

kserr said:

My stove is a St Croix EXP three years old. Yes my stove doesn't have a feed trim only on level 1 which is the lowest setting. Why does a dencer pellet cause problems.?Is it because they burn longer and if you don't have a feed trim it keeps on dumping pellets before they are completely burnt up? How do you check the density?

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It isn't that they burn longer (although as a consequence of what is missing they do, and this you see as a pileup and other things you don't want to deal with) they aren't getting enough air in order to burn before the next charge of fuel is delivered.

If you were to somehow break it all apart you'd discover that by weight the pellets burn at about the same rate. With denser pellets you have more weight in the fuel charge.

Dense pellets need either more air or less fuel per charge of fuel.

If you have both an air and feed trim you have a lot of control over the stove.

Otherwise you have to use what you have or change to a different pellet.

kserr said:

Why does a dencer pellet cause problems? Is it because they burn longer and if you don't have a feed trim it keeps on dumping pellets before they are completely burnt up? How do you check the density?

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Now your catching it! I had issues with Hamer pellet. I took the clumps and hit them with a torch while they were in an aluminum tin plate(outside ofcoarse). I could get fire from them which makes me thinx they were not fully burned. I reduced my feed trim and the clumps(not clinkers by any means) went away.

PFI's spec for checking density is:

6.1.1 Bulk Density � Determine in accordance with ASTM E 873 except this method shall
be revised to utilize a 1/4 cubic foot container that is tapped 25 times from 1 inch. In
order to insure that an adequate sample quantity is available for this revised method, a
minimum sample size of 12 pounds (5.44 kilograms) is recommended.

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A 1/4 cubic foot box is 12 x 6 x 6 or 432 cu inches. I use a standard shipping cardboard box to check the density. I took an average weight of 3 fills. and then multiplied by 4. Don't forget to tare the scale to remove the box weight. I guess you could use any size box as long as you know the cu inches of it. Then multiply it out to get the 1728 cu inch(1 cubic foot). Go by the inside dimensions of said box.

Example:
A 6x6x6(216 cu in) box would require multipling the weight by 8 to get the density. 216x8=1728 say the sample averaged 5 1/2 pounds. 5.5x8=44 LBS. total density

Burned 3 tons of Barefoot dated 6-2010 in my Mount Vernon and they were crap. I just picked up 3 more tons of Barefoot dated 1-2010. I'm hoping to see a difference. A lot of ash, black chunky clinkers and a filthy glass after only a couple of days with the 6-2010 batch. To boot, the exhaust behind the baffle needed to be cleaned before burning a ton of pellets. I will report back with the difference in the quality of the burn from 1-2010 vs 6-2010, if any.

I have just one question.,why the heck would you buy more of them if you were having problems.? I too am having the same problems and will never probably buy them again.

kserr said:

I have just one question.,why the heck would you buy more of them if you were having problems.? I too am having the same problems and will never probably buy them again.

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Not much to choose from right now in my area. I don't want New England or Instant Heat. Its going to be -5 this weekend and I was down to 4 bags. The heat output of the 6-2010 batch were excellent, just very dirty. I have burned 2 bags of the new 1-2010 batch and I have a very minimal haze, if any, on my glass. It seems to be burning much cleaner. The materials for the summer months could have been bad. I loved Dry Creek the previous year, but my supplier doesn't carry it.

Glad to hear that their better for you.

I also decreased my feed rate and increased air flow. Read these posts. The high density pellets seem to need more time to burn fully. I have a mount vernon ae which was tricky to adjust the rates, but other stoves may be easier to do. My stove is set on sunflower mode rather than hardwood and my flame adjustment is -5.

https://www.hearth.com/econtent/index.php/forums/viewthread/66727/

https://www.hearth.com/econtent/index.php/forums/viewthread/66920/

Will someone tell me whats in the bad batches of bareFoots to make the glass and brick soooo black? Never did I have any pellet that created this before.

mine are dated 08-09 they are the best pellets i have in my opinion. they dont mess my glass up ,not much ash and some of the best heat

kserr said:

Will someone tell me whats in the bad batches of bareFoots to make the glass and brick soooo black? Never did I have any pellet that created this before.

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Your guess is as good as ours! My guess is there very dense and your not compensating for it with reducing the fuel feed trim or giving the stove more combustion air. Some stoves are damper air only.

I suppose you could send a bag to a lab. You could have them tested for ash content and analyzed for other components. But its not very cheap to do.

My friend & I both purchased a ton of Barefoots. We were psyched, because of all the positive stuff we heard. Burnt 3 bags & they are total CRAP! Tried several adjustments, still sucked. One morning my furnace kicked on, house temp dropped to 61 degrees while burning Barefoots. Went back to my fav, Hammers and house get hot, need to open windows sometimes. I'll never buy Barefoots again, dirty, ashy, low heat, dirty glass. Anyone in Harrisburg Pa. Area want to buy 47 bags of Barefoots, I'll sell em cheap. Just PM me. Oh yeah, my buddy hates his as well, for same reasons.

Well it looks like more than just a few are complaining about them. Has anyone contacted Barefoots? I am sure they would like to know whats going on and maybe they can offer some help. You paid for a top of the heap pellet(top dollar) one would expect top quality!

Can you all post the bag dates, I'll try to locate some with that date and do a spot check on them.

Mine were dated 7-2010. Yes as consumers we should have the right to get some answers. After all this is what we heat are homes with.

Have 3 tons of barefoot I'm burning now, great burn, very hot, clean glass, date 1/10. Used Barefoot for the 2008-2009 heating season and also was very happy with them. I have an accentra FS, last year 2009-2010 heating season uses NEWP and Corinth, not as good as Barefoot and will never use Corinth again, very dirty. Tried Stove Chow and Green Team, not bad, average in my opinion. I think some just got a bad batch of Barefoot. Hope they correct the problem for next year heating season. I'll buy them again.

I switched back to my Barefoots and adjusted the combustion air and the problem seems to have been greatly reduced. Not sure if opening up the air reduces the heat and efficiency, but we shall see. Cold as crap around here - 10F right now and was -2F this morning. Longest cold spell I can remember.

I am having the same issues with my P68, my glass is black in less than a day, have to scrape the burn pot daily, and getting some huge ash mustaches. I won't buy them again. Just for ha ha 's I picked up a couple of bags of stove chow, they burned so much cleaner and no black build up. They don't burn as nice as the Spruce Points that I burned last year, but for $168 a ton(after Lowes 10% off) they will do.