Austroflamm start up issues

[Toasty in NH]

Hi everyone. New here and new to pellet stoves . Learning alot from this site and from getting to know my stove. We have a 1993 Austoflamm Integra . Last night smoke came out of stove after about 15 min. of operation.Tall , lazy flame.We shut it down.
Today , we cleaned it some more and finally freed up the cleaning rods . Started it up again today, Huge difference in flame,lot of heat output , no smoke,ran for about 30 minutes and exhaust fan shut off after the unit cooled down.Feeling better, but still very nervous about the smoke coming out . Should we be having a huge flame during start up mode ? Thank you so much for any info !

 

[Toasty in NH]

Hopefully someone will take pity on me and come back with an answer !!

 

[Mark_ms]

Sorry for the delay in answering.

First off did you buy this stove and install it yourself or did it come with the house?

I have to start my stove manually with pellets that are lightly soaked in lamp oil or you can use fire gel or any other firestarter, your preference.

When I light my stove and put the soaked pellets in the burnpot light them close the door and wait a few minutes until they get going and then I turn on my stove, if I turn my stove on too soon before pellets have a chance to get going I will get a lot of smoke until the pellets "catch" and once they do the smoke will disappear. Once your fire starts you have very little control of fan speed or feed rate of auger for the next few minutes until all the switches and fans do their thing. Flame should be very lively and actually touches the top of the
stove, once the the convection fan kicks in you then can adjust your rheostat.
If you have an automatic igniter I do not know too much about them so maybe someonelse will chime in

Hope this helps.

 

[steamguy]

I used to have an Austroflamm of that same vintage, no auto-igniter. Yes you will get very tall flames for about 11 minutes while the stove goes through its startup routine. Then the fire will gradually come down to where it should be for your control setting.

I used to use gel starter, or other starters like the wood chip stuff; then I found the best (cheapest) way to start mine was to use a blowtorch. Here's how you do it:

Throw in a big handful of pellets, turn the power switch ON then OFF. This will start the combustion fan. Light your blowtorch and get a section of the pellets going to the point where they're starting to flame nicely on the top. This only takes usually about 15-30 seconds. Close the door almost all the way (you'll hear the air rushing through it), then, watching the fire, gradually close it the rest of the way to allow the draft to really get the pellets going without snuffing them. Sometimes you have to have the door cracked just a bit until the pellets really take off. Lock the door closed and wait about a minute and a half for the pile of pellets to really get going, then switch the power switch back ON to start the feed. Keep an eye on the pellets for a minute to make sure the feeding pellets don't completely snuff the fire. If they start to do so, just flip the feed switch back OFF for a few seconds until the fire catches up. Once it's really going, you don't have to worry about it any more.

You have one of the finest stoves sold in the US at that time; hope yours serves you as well as ours did us. It was almost dead silent, and we sure miss that! Make sure that when you're cleaning it, to unbolt and open the inspection door to the lower right (as you face the stove) and clean out that area also.

 

[Toasty in NH]

Thanks, Mark and Steamguy . We bought the stove , used . Hubby is able to fix most everything , so we took the risk .It's old ,but cranks the heat ! We're gonna have it inspected this week ,and hopefully all is well . he's gonna install an O.A. K. and hopefully we'll get a couple of winters out of it ! Not so scared of start up anymore . Thanks for your replies !!