After reading about the problems folks post on here who have had hopper seal / safety switch malfunctions, up to now I've tended to regard the hopper switches as just one more thing that can frig up and cause a start-up problem. But after reading of the hopper fire post from yesterday, I am certainly seeing their value as a fail - safe, really being the last line of defense against having a hopper fire potentially ignite and cause a catastrophic stove fire, instead of the smoldering fire like this stove did in that incident.
Given my 1st generation Quad Castile doesn't have an airtight hopper lid seal nor a hopper safety switch, if I was to have an auger fire that for some reason didn't kick out the the #3 back burn protector snap disc, it could conceivably keep spreading up into the hopper and potentially ignite the pellets vs just continuing to smolder if the hopper had an airtight seal.
Kap, or any of you other Quad wizards out there, do you know if there has been any discussion at Quad about doing an after-market add on of a hopper safety switch, or at least a way to make a more airtight hopper seal to reduce the chance of pellet combustion, for the the earlier Quad models like mine that don't have them?
The most likely way to cause an auger fire seems to be pellets backing up into the drop chute due to an ash-filled burn pot, in combination with a bad door seal where combustion air can bypass the burn pot. One added safety advantage to partially blocking my air wash for more heat output is that it pulls so much air through the burn pot that I get zero ash build-up in the pot, so there is much less chance for the pellets to have a way to over-fill the burn pot and back up into the pellet drop chute.
Given my 1st generation Quad Castile doesn't have an airtight hopper lid seal nor a hopper safety switch, if I was to have an auger fire that for some reason didn't kick out the the #3 back burn protector snap disc, it could conceivably keep spreading up into the hopper and potentially ignite the pellets vs just continuing to smolder if the hopper had an airtight seal.
Kap, or any of you other Quad wizards out there, do you know if there has been any discussion at Quad about doing an after-market add on of a hopper safety switch, or at least a way to make a more airtight hopper seal to reduce the chance of pellet combustion, for the the earlier Quad models like mine that don't have them?
The most likely way to cause an auger fire seems to be pellets backing up into the drop chute due to an ash-filled burn pot, in combination with a bad door seal where combustion air can bypass the burn pot. One added safety advantage to partially blocking my air wash for more heat output is that it pulls so much air through the burn pot that I get zero ash build-up in the pot, so there is much less chance for the pellets to have a way to over-fill the burn pot and back up into the pellet drop chute.
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