A couple of MT Vernon AE Questions......

27F woke up to 74F that may be my best yet. Using Trebio's. Cant wait to see single digits later this week. I have to admit Harv i wasnt a believer in your flame height suggestion I thought the burn was going to be to dirty.

A buddy turned me on to this forum, I am glad its here. You guys have alot of useful info. I live at 8000 ft. in the Colorado Rockys.Its currently been well below 0 deg. at nights, sometimes - 30. I do see the same issues with my Mt. Vernon (non insert) as most of you discribe here. I'm on my second season with it and have never felt it puts out enough heat. I will try some of these sugguestions learned here today and will re post what I've come up with. I'm begining to think that maybe my conditions are extreme enough to really test the capabilities of ANY pellet stove and I'm expecting too much from it. I will tinker with settings, etc. and see what I get. In the meantime thanks to Harvey, OMV & LMPS ( and the rest of you) for sharing this much needed info

Welcome aboard...Start a thread and show us some pictures!

Man i threw in a bag of somerset's and fell asleep. 29F outside and i have my front door wide open
These pellets suck their gonna kill me

I will gladly take some off your hands......

I just turned my flame height up to +3. What to do you have it up now?

+3 ( to hot though ) cold snap coming in so maybe +5 later this week

You know these things have thermostats don't you?
Flame height controls rate of heating limit, thermostat controls temperature limit.

yeah but im use to over shooting the stat so it stays on a higher blower setting on auto have to remember cant do that with somersets this is the 2nd time i done it

Ran the stove on stove on +3 last night was about 31 out and 72 in the house when I went to bed last night and 27 when I got up and the house was still 72. Not a big change in temp but still it held the house which is the first time this happened.

Next question, I run my stove in manual and have always assumed the heat output adjustment increased the pellet feed rate. Is this assumption correct? Or does the heat output only adjuster the blower speed? Or does it do both?

increases feed rate, the drop tube thermocouple takes care of fan speed.

So 5F this morning and i couldnt be happier woke up to 74F that is a first +3 flame height i salute you lol looks like that solved the problem of not keeping up normally it would only be about 68

So, now are you going to be complaining about how many bags of pellets it's consuming? Sorry, I just couldn't resist that.

Not me lol i was so happy i didnt even open the hopper this morning, and i usually do every morning

Edit: i just went to check, not bad at all considering im using somersets that usually burn faster. probably used about a bag overnight thats nothing

Went with a +3 last night also and it was 72 in the house at 9:30pm and 19 out side. This morning house was 69 and it was 15 outside. So, it is better but still losing some.
Today, I am running +5 and on manual High and right now its 14 out and the house got up to 71.2. It's auto cleaning right now so we will see what happens.
I also switched it to softwood to get the longer run. So at this point I do not know what else I could do to get more out of the stove.

if your stat is set at 72 nothing wrong with 69 i think i was set at 79 to stay at 74

Sunflower seed setting will get you more heat!

true but i rather not use that setting for daily use, UNLESS i have to

Nope stat was set at 75. The stove auto cleaned at 5:30pm and it was at 71.2 before then after it got done auto cleaning and was restarting it got down to 68.7. It is now 7:15pm and it is back up to 70.7. It has fallen outside from 14 at 5:30 to now 12.2. Settings have been the same throughout, +5 and High.
So during auto clean I lost 2.5 degrees and it has been running now for 40 min after auto clean and it has raised the temp 2 degrees. The question remains if it will be able to get it back up to 71.2 before the next auto clean.

I am not going to burn on sunflower I do not want to lose my fuel table updates.

Its working better it is now 8:10 and the house is back up to 71.4 with the temp dropping to 11.4 outside. So it took an hour and half to gain back the 2.5 degrees it lost during auto cleaning. And guess what it is now auto cleaning again so we start over again. I guess at least its keeping up instead of losing.

changing to sunflower setting wont do that

I switched to softwood LMPS maybe its just the somersets, but its smoking hot i couldnt even stand in front of it to load a bag of pellets i had to stand on the side. 12 inches from the front i could only count to 1 and had to move my hand

you guys have a lot more heat loss than me. LMPS losses 2.5 degrees during an autoclean cycle? Mine will satisfy the stat and cycle off even if its in the teens outside, unless its windier than chit. you guys must smoke thru 2-3 bags a day at that rate...

I don't know how your temperatures can drop that fast. You must have some serious heat losses.
One more thing to suggest. Set the heat differential to 1.5 degrees (or maybe even 1 degree). That will have the stove correct temperature errors more quickly.

Your right sorry got confused with changing the altitude adjustment.

Yes lost 2.5 degress. I am starting to really think an energy audit needs to be done as I agree I am losing a lot of heat and it looks like more an more its my house. Yes when its cold out 2 bags is normal, real cold 2.5 to 3.

I can do this but I am calling for it to 75 degrees and it never reaches it so the stove does not shut down because it is satisfying the thermostat, it is only shutting down to auto clean.

The house was 69 when I got up this morning but it was 27 which is up from 11.4 when I went to bed.
The changes Harvey and Oldmountvernon have suggested have helped as I said at this point I think its more my house.

Try manual high output swing 1.5 or 2 it should crank. pellets matter too just remember on Auto you really have to over shoot the stat most cases they say 2 degrees but i go more and i think you need to as well i would try 81 overnight