3rd season - Castile ignitor beginning to fail

I can't complain. This is my third season running my Castile free-standing and I began to notice a change in the starting/burning process recently. It is beginning to take a little longer, 2.5 to 3 minutes or so for the pellets to ignite into flames and after a few minutes the flames are higher and more intense than usual indicating too many pellets in the burn pot at one time. I still have a normal pellet feed at startup, then the usual dellay until the next pellet drop sequence but by now the first drop is just beginning to ignite and being dumped on again. I opened the cleaning door below and can clearly see the ignitor loop at full power and not glowing bright red nearly as much as when it was new, perhaps 40% to 50%.

So I just ordered a new ignitor ($70 inclucing shipping) to replace it and keep the first one as a backup because it does still work. Again, no complaints here, just part of owning a pellet stove and being aware of sometimes subtle changes in operation to avoid a full failure. Preventive maintenance.

On our stoves, you get the initial feed of pellets for startup BUT no more pellets will feed until after the flame is established and the green light comes on in the control box indicating that 200 degrees has been sensed by the thermocouple. The bigger flame up could be caused by the slower heatup of ALL the pellets rather than just those in front of the igniter slot. When they ALL ignite at once, you see the bigger flame. Possible???

Very possible. The only thing that seems out of whack is the low glow of the ignitor which I know used to be a very bright red so the first thing for me to do is change out the ignitor and see if that solves the problem. It's not so much an issue as it is just a noticeable change in operation that I want to catch before it gets any worse.

Thanks!

That's the same thing I would do when my time comes!