Newbie to Pellets stoves, regretting right now buying one

BradH70 said:

jeff5347 said:

Brad, yes my thoughts have been heavily on bringing it upstairs. Was i wrong to think of using the stove as my main heat for the winter and hopefully only use the oil for water heat?

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You should be able to heat your house with just pellet stove considering the sq/ft that you mentioned if you move it to the main living floor. I am heating our house (two floors) which is ~2200sq/ft with just the pellet stove insert. The oil burner is now used only to heat DHW.

Are you trying to heat the downstairs(basement) because it is part of the living space?

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Looks to me like he has a family room down there.

SmokeyTheBear said:

So it appears that you are attempting to heat close to 2700 square feet of house, but likely really needs close to 33,000 BTU of output to do that (going by the boiler figures and some weird adjustments for domestic hot water and reasonable temperature recovery rates on cold days). The BTU figure for your stove is an input firing rate (I swear it is on a good day with no head wind using the best possible pellets to boot) so at full bore you are getting about 37,500 (using another dubious efficiency figure).

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I don't understand what you have posted here. The plate on his heater has 2 different ranges. One for hot water and the other for heat. The heat number BTU is way higher then what you posted above. How do you come up with 33,000 and the furnace part says 100,000?

How does that work?

Bkins said:

SmokeyTheBear said:

So it appears that you are attempting to heat close to 2700 square feet of house, but likely really needs close to 33,000 BTU of output to do that (going by the boiler figures and some weird adjustments for domestic hot water and reasonable temperature recovery rates on cold days). The BTU figure for your stove is an input firing rate (I swear it is on a good day with no head wind using the best possible pellets to boot) so at full bore you are getting about 37,500 (using another dubious efficiency figure).

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I don't understand what you have posted here. The plate on his heater has 2 different ranges. One for hot water and the other for heat. The heat number BTU is way higher then what you posted above. How do you come up with 33,000 and the furnace part says 100,000?

How does that work?

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The plates give gross and net BTU figures at two of many possible nozzle rates and I derated for domestic hot water and the slop used to provide a decent temperature recovery time on cold days, that normally puts the required calculated heat figure at about 1/3 of net.

I then derated the pellet unit by the touted average efficiency rate for a pellet stove, the stove has the horses to do the heating part of the job.

May be trivial, but I'm still questioning the EVL.

smoke show said:

May be trivial, but I'm still questioning the EVL.

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Looks like it is right at or a hair below the limit for 3" vent, it would be better if the vertical were vertical, and he might get a bit more heat out the front if there was a damper on the unit and it was closed a bit but the picture of the flame isn't good enough to judge or my eyesight needs looking after. I understand that happens when you get old.

jeff5347 said:

Smokey, that flame is with LG granules. They are soft pellets. i noticed i am not able to even get the flame lazy and high even with the feed rate fully open to dump the most in. Im gonna try the New england pellets again as i now have a better understanding of the unit. Wit htose i got a really high flame i could at least adjust down. With thh LGs i cant get it even were it shgould be. So no you arent going blind the flame is only 2 inches above the firepot..

Also ..what is EVL exhaust valve leak? Elavated valve limit?
Would a OAK do anything for me or m ore of a waste of money?

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Jeff,

EVL is equivalent vent length, there are limits for the venting system based upon applying certain numerical values to each kind of vent pipe.

The normal limit for 3" vent for most but not all stoves is an evl of 15 if it exceeds that the venting needs to be 4".

The numbers are:

1 foot of vertical length = an evl of 0.5
Tee = 5
90degree elbow = 5
1 foot of horizontal (we will discuss what horizontal really isn't) = 1
45 degree elbow = 2.5 or 3.0 depending on the manufacturer

If you turn an elbow so it is horizontal its evl doubles.

So if you have an adapter followed by a Tee and 4 feet of vertical followed by a 90 degree elbow followed by 2 feet of horizontal followed by a termination cap your vents evl would be 5+4(0.5)+5+2 = 5+2+5+2 = 14 so 3" is fine unless the stove manufacturer says 12.

Now a couple of things a non vertical pipe has a vertical and horizontal component which increases the evl over what the true vertical evl would be. Now about horizontal runs they best have a 1/4" per foot up bubble going away from the stove. They never should be horizontal and down bubble is a major restriction and problem.

This is pellet stove venting 101.

I'm a firm believer in using an OAK, have a reasonably tight house, what happens in a basement install when the juice goes out, and having no desire to toss any air that I have heated out the flue it wasn't even off the list from the git go.

My comment about the flame was more directed towards color and the possibility that the flue might be seeing more of the heat than it should and thus it is exiting the house instead of being used to provide usable heat.

Whats the vent like outside the house?

Does the flame ever get higher with thatstove?


Have you tried blowing the cold air toward the basement?

BIH

With the basement temp hovering at 85 and no heat rising up the stairs your only option is to move that stove upstairs to the first floor. OAK and venting won't make much of a change since your problem is really moving heat not your install. Vents in the floor and circulation of air is important but in your case sounds the best option is move the stove to the 1st floor. My2Cents

LIpelletpig said:

With the basement temp hovering at 85 and no heat rising up the stairs your only option is to move that stove upstairs to the first floor. OAK and venting won't make much of a change since your problem is really moving heat not your install. Vents in the floor and circulation of air is important but in your case sounds the best option is move the stove to the 1st floor. My2Cents

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Actually changes to the venting if needed and other things can have an impact.

But the primary one is the fact there is a full cold air cap on top of the only exit from the basement and when everyone decides what else is wrong I will tell the OP something (actually several somethings) that may help. But I asked some questions and am patiently awaiting the answers.

My vote is for upstairs also. May be easier to try and push some air downstairs if needed.

Where is majority of your time spent? Upstairs or Down? Also you could get a lower EVL with the vent you have by venting upstairs. Straight out the back of stove 2 ft (through the wall) then cleanout-T and then some vertical. No problem heating upstairs with it upstairs. Its basically a Quadrafire stove with a different exterior cladding.

jeff5347 said:

Bigisland, when i had the hardwoods (just picked up some tonight) the flame would get higher and i would adjust the feed to slow down as it was getting so much and im assuming wasting some. With the soft ones it seemed i couldnt get an appropriate flame. We will see with the hardwoods tomorrow. On the vent to outside it exits the metal about another 14 inches and has a 60 degree adapter to aim towards the ground. There is about a 16 inch ground clearance outside.


Smokey, i thought i may have answered everything to give what i could. I apologize, what ?s did i not respond to yet?
Wish you were closer to Mass i would have you come over and give my house a look around to see what i have good and not.

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Getting old missed your post about the ceiling heights and no idea about the air flow rate of the convection blower.

Ok, something to try if you can find some large card board boxes, as an experiment block off the back and side of the railings around the stairwell. I'm constructing a block for the cold air across part of your stairwell. Yes I hear the wife now. But humor me a bit.

This should emulate a two duct system and the cold air should tumble down the open end. But a lot of your heat is also going to go across into the other area of your basement. You might be able to tap into it with something a bit different than that corner fan I see, do you know what the flow rate is on that?

I'm going to dig up some air flow figures for that stove, don't know how successful I'll be and see if I can figure the stoves ability to turn over the air in the house.

Ok, your house has a maximum of 19088 cubic feet of air that has to be heated and homogenized.

I hope your blower has a good air flow rate.

I tried three different stoves in the basement and just couldn't do it. Finally got tired of local dealers saying (their) stove would do it at a cost of 4 grand. Finally went on E-bay and bought a new Bixby for 1700 delivered to the door and installed it on the main floor. I can buy parts from the factory if needed and don't have to put up with a attitude from the all important only dealer around. If a person wants to learn about a particular model of stove this is the place for most models. You will be told the good and bad plus you can learn to be mechanically inclined and save yourself a bundle of money. It would be best if you had a friend with a pellet stove and a few years burning experience to ask questions.
A chimney sweep would be a good person to ask advice and he may know how to do what you want.

Well I can't comment about your setups folks, but it has to be looked at as a system and that means air flow rates, the amount of air that has to be heated and moved, the removal of any impediments to the moving of the air, and the reduction of all heat loss factors.

Jeff,

I've looked at a number of places for the air flow rate of the 812-4900 and so far am coming up empty. I'll do some more poking around tomorrow.

Drink some Wine or Whiskey and then walk around holding some incense. Watch the smoke and see where it goes especially in the stairwell area.

Your stairwell is as small as a stairwell can possibly be which means it's not going to allow much heat upstairs. I literally can almost feel the temperature change based on the pictures you provided.

Remember, if you overheat one space you cause more heat loss from that space.

Here is what I would I do. Get a box fan and hang it from the railing so it sits at the top of the ceiling of the basement. Basically, if you were to walk down the stairs your face would run right into it. See how much this changes this temp upstairs. This will tell you if your stove is capable of heating your house or not.

If it can then a simple compact blower place somewhere on the basement ceiling should be enough to get heat upstairs.

If this doesn't work then I would just move the stove upstairs where you spend most of your time?

jeff5347 said:

Checkthisout, would i have the box fan blow up stairs or suck air downstairs?

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Blow upstairs. You want it pulling heat out of the basement and pushing it upstairs.

You have to move a LOT of air.

SmokeyTheBear said:

Two things you have to produce enough BTU's to over come the heat loss of the area you are heating and then get the heat distributed after producing it.

Second can we see a picture looking up the stairs from the basement and down the stairs from the first floor?

Frequently there is an air block that sets up in most stairways.

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Hey Smokey, tell me more about this air block in the stairway.

Much obliged

RKS130 said:

SmokeyTheBear said:

Two things you have to produce enough BTU's to over come the heat loss of the area you are heating and then get the heat distributed after producing it.

Second can we see a picture looking up the stairs from the basement and down the stairs from the first floor?

Frequently there is an air block that sets up in most stairways.

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Hey Smokey, tell me more about this air block in the stairway.

Much obliged

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The air going up is choked off (obviously not completely) by the air going down.

Checkthisout said:

RKS130 said:

SmokeyTheBear said:

Two things you have to produce enough BTU's to over come the heat loss of the area you are heating and then get the heat distributed after producing it.

Second can we see a picture looking up the stairs from the basement and down the stairs from the first floor?

Frequently there is an air block that sets up in most stairways.

Click to expand...

Hey Smokey, tell me more about this air block in the stairway.

Much obliged

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The air going up is choked off (obviously not completely) by the air going down.

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And how is this fixed/remedied/worked around?