Behold, They Dance

[becasunshine]

This post is a follow up to my ongoing Damper Settings Dilemma.

I've been tweaking the settings for a few weeks, trying to wring every last btu out of our Napoleon NPS40.

Last year I decided on feed 4, damper setting 2 out of damper scale Lo 1 2 3 4 5.

This year I decided to try lower (more closed) damper settings to see if we could dump more of our btu's into the house rather than out of the exhaust pipe.

I tried burning the stove on damper 1, feed 4 and the burn pot filled up with ash too quickly.

Damper 1.5, feed 4 did better but we still had a lot of ash in the burn pot.

I tried lowering the feed to 3 with damper Lo, because the flame changes from lazy and sooty to white and bright at Lo. That burned OK, just OK, for 24 hours. We got OK heat but not great out of it. That makes sense- it corresponds to a low burn.

I commented yesterday that no matter how open the damper, what rate the feed, our pellets just don't dance. I see everybody chattinga away about their dancing pellets, and I didn't get it. My pellets don't dance. Ever.

This morning when I shut down to clean after the feed 3, damper Lo experiment I found a sooty stove. (No big surprise there.) I vacuumed it well and decided to open the damper to burn with lots of combustion air for a bit, to burn off any remaining soot.

So I set it on feed 4, damper 3 and went on about my day.

I went in to check on the stove several hours later- about the time that I noticed that the house was feeling surprisingly warm despite cold temps outside, and the gas furnace hadn't cut in.

The stove was putting out quite a bit of heat.

I stuck our deep fat fryer/candy thermometer in the heat exchange exhaust. 250'F! I don't think we've ever gotten an output reading that high.

Most importantly- my pellets were dancing!

And I didn't think my pellets could dance.

So, it appears that the Magic Damper Setting is 3, and 3 Shall Be The Magic Damper Setting.

Gaugh. I'm done thinking about damper settings- even though I know that's not true, I like to tell myself that.

 

[eschills]

becasunshine, I have found that with feed rate at 3 if you pull the damper oiut slowly you will see the flame get tighter and whiter. Usually when that stops is when your damper is set correctly. Mine is also at 3. I can than increase the feed rate to 4. I am happy you found the right mixture. good luck...

 

[becasunshine]

eschills, we have a straight horizontal exhaust and an OAK, both of which have a relatively short excursion. I swear, our flame changes from lazy when the damper is completely closed to tight and white somewhere around damper setting Lo. I had my husband stand over my shoulder and watch the flame while I pulled the damper rod out just to make sure it wasn't my imagination.

Our true test of flame quality seems to be how clean the stove burns, i.e. how much ash we build up in the burn pot, how sooty the glass gets, whether the soot on the glass is brown or gray, etc. and now, DANCING PELLETS.

Have you measured the heat output of your stove?

We've not purchased an infrared thermometer or wired up a thermometer to the stove. We've been using my kitchen deep fry/candy making thermometer, stuck in the far left heat exchange tube exhaust port. So far our best temperature has been 255'F. That's with a clean stove at feed 4, damper 3.

I downloaded an NPS40 manual from Napoleon's web site yesterday, because for the life of me I can't put my hands on our Napoleon manual. (This is weird because I keep our paperwork organized. It'll turn up someplace silly- I've misfiled it somehow.)

I sat down and read the new manual yesterday. Maybe I didn't read the original manual carefully enough, but there seems to be a lot more information in the manual I downloaded yesterday.

It did remind me that the preferred feed setting is 4- so I'm working from feed setting 4. The pellets don't dance at damper setting 2, but admittedly I've got to test that setting with the deep fry thermometer to see if I get a higher temp in the heat exchanger.

 

[IceNine]

Yanno? Here's where i'm just totally baffled. Per you instructions beca, i tried running my stove at 4/2 (feed/damper) and i get a flame that BARELY leaves the burn pot. Pellets burn WAY too fast and we get little to no heat from the stove. Tried the damper at 1.5 then 1, all just seem to have the same effect. I have to let the littlest of air in the stove in order to get some heat out of it. Understandably there's more ash in the pot. I haven't tried any thermometers yet, I've been using the hand test method. With the settings you have i can leave my hand on the left side of the stove (the hot side) and it's a nice hot air akin to what you would get from your car heating. Hot air that gets you warm but not HOT AIR. We're not even going to talk about the right side because obviously our stoves are leftists. They despise the right side. When i close the damper, pretty much, all the way down. I get a roaring fire and when the stove really gets going i can barely keep my hand on the left side for 1-2 seconds, so this baby is putting out some MAJOR heat. So does the left side, although not quite as hot, i can usually keep my hand there for about 4-5 seconds. I cannot get a happy medium that would resort to not as much ash build-up with some moderately high heat output. Going back to my original "not heating problem" i think that's what it was. The damper was opened up too much and the pellets were just burning away not producing much heat. Dunno, maybe i'm just stuck with having to clean up the stove more often than i would like to.

 

[becasunshine]

IceNine, I *totally* get it. We Napoleon burners seem to have distinct flame characteristics. Based on what little I've read from other brand users, I wonder if this has to do with our round, deep burn pots. Our flames ain't like their flames.

That being said, I've sat around for hours now fiddling with damper settings, a deep fry thermometer and gazing into my burn pot. (That sounds vaguely scandalous. Sorry.) So far what I've determined about my set up:

Feed 4, Damper Lo = guaranteed too much ash in pot and sooty burn, sedentary pellets
Feed 3, Damper Lo = reasonable heat output, sooty burn, too much ash in pot, sedentary pellets
Feed 4, Damper 1 = reasonable heat output, too much ash in pot, stove burns lazy in less than 24 hours, sedentary pellets
Feed 4, Damper 2 = our default "I don't want to ponder this" setting, good burn, good heat output, guaranteed to make it for 24 hours without a lazy flame or too much ash in the pot, pellet embers hang around in burn pot long enough for stove to stay lit. Upon further study the pellets look as though they might want to dance. They shuffle their little feet just a bit. Based on the deep fry thermometer, heat exchange tube exhaust output approaches 200'F.
Feed 4, Damper 3 = almost no ash accumulation in the burn pot, stove stays lit although sometimes it gives me pause when the embers burn almost out before the auger delivers a fresh batch, based on my deep fry thermometer in the far left heat exchange tube exhaust this setting gives me the best heat output at 255'F with a clean stove, and last but not least- DANCING PELLETS!

At all of those settings, we get a big variation in flame volume- more variation as the damper is opened further, but notable variations at all damper settings. Our flame only extends above the burn pot by a couple of inches at all settings.

My observation? Every brand is different, every model is different, each individual stove has its quirks and certainly every install is different.

We have an OAK, too. Don't know exactly how that plays into the equation.

Did you mention that you are using the chimney from a previous woodstove install? I wonder if you are getting a better draw than we are, with our horizontal direct vent pipe. Maybe you are just pulling a rip roaring amount of air through that burn pot because of an excellent chimney.

Heck if I know.

I don't think I could get pellets popping out of that deep round burn pot if I wanted to. Of course I haven't tried a day of burning at damper 5. Yet.

And yes, our stove is a lefty too! I wonder why that is... ???

Maybe we should form a Napoleon Pellet Stove Burn Pot Support Group. VORTEX BURNERS UNITE!

 

[IceNine]

Yeah we are using a pre-existing chimney for a wood burning stove. No OAK. The problem i have also is that i want HEAT and i want it now. i'm slowly realizing that this is something a pellet stove does not deliver. It's more of a long term heat solution. My wife and i don't get home until 5-6 and it takes a good 2-3 hours to get the house to the 69-70 maybe a couple of degrees higher where i like the house temp to be. We are generally in bed by like 9:30 or so and after a couple of minutes under the comforter that we have i could care less if there's any heat in the house at all. That thing keeps me warm. It was great last Saturday i was able to achieve that but i had to be burning all day long. I can't get the wife to let me run the stove during the day and see what difference that makes. BTW my flames pretty much want to roll forward on the glass when the stove really gets going. :|

Also, what pellets are you burning beca?

I tried hamer's hot ones first and really liked them. On to the greene team batch and i'm not entirely happy with them. They are MUCH MUCH bigger. The average is about 1 1/2" long. and they are producing too much ash. Got 2 bags of energex to try out. I think i'm just going to bit the bullet and order the ton of Hamers

 

[becasunshine]

We used Hamer's last year, along with some Lignetics that we bought second hand from a person who had intended to use them for another purpose (pet related, long story, didn't quite understand it myself.) Both burned well, although as I recall I think we had more heat consistency with the Hamer's. I liked Hamer's.

This year we are burning O'Malleys because they gave us the best price, and because they've opened a plant in central VA. It's in our best interest to support local jobs and to keep pellet production in our area, so you betcha we were gonna at least try O'Malleys. We've been pleased with O'Malleys so if the price stays competitive we'll continue to buy them.

Yeah, if you are starting from a cold house it takes a few hours to get the heat circulated throughout. You can get nice heat in the vicinity of the stove pretty much on demand, but it takes a bit to circulate the heat throughout the house.

 

[teetah222]

OK, just popping in because all this talk about pellets dancing caught my attention... My pellets never dance. Being serious here. (No comments about not giving them the right music... ok?) My stove heats just fine, but I never see the pellets dancing, even when the heat and air are turned up. Why is the pellet dance considered to be so important?

 

[becasunshine]

My understanding, and my understanding is very limited, this is only our second burn season, is that the pellets should jump around just a bit in the burn pot but they should not jump out of the pot. If they jump out the damper is too opened? I think? My pellets don't move below damper 2. At damper 2 they quiver a little bit. At damper 3 they actually move about a bit in the pot. I don't think I've ever achieved an actual burn pot break out. Seriously.

I do get sparks out of the pot. I'm not sure if that's considered part of The Pellet Dance.

I think the idea is that there is enough air flow through the burn pot to move the pellets and blow the ash out of the burn pot and down into the ash pan. I know that if we burn with the damper closed too much we do accumulate ash in the burn pot. If we accumulate too much ash in the burn pot it starts blocking the combustion air.

News Flash! The newer Napoleon model, the NPS45, has a "purge cycle" that activates at start up, shut down, and at 60 minute intervals to remove ash from the burn pot and deposit it in the ash pan. I'm jealous.

Now I'm off to dance. With my pellets. Yeah. You read that.

 

[sydney1963]

OK, just popping in because all this talk about pellets dancing caught my attention... My pellets never dance. Being serious here. (No comments about not giving them the right music... ok?) My stove heats just fine, but I never see the pellets dancing, even when the heat and air are turned up. Why is the pellet dance considered to be so important?

My pellets don't dance either, I think it's because of the type of stove we have.

 

[imacman]

......is that the pellets should jump around just a bit in the burn pot but they should not jump out of the pot. If they jump out the damper is too opened? I think? My pellets don't move below damper 2. At damper 2 they quiver a little bit. At damper 3 they actually move about a bit in the pot.

I do get sparks out of the pot. I'm not sure if that's considered part of The Pellet Dance.

I think the idea is that there is enough air flow through the burn pot to move the pellets and blow the ash out of the burn pot and down into the ash pan. I know that if we burn with the damper closed too much we do accumulate ash in the burn pot. If we accumulate too much ash in the burn pot it starts blocking the combustion air.

Beca, you have it 100% correct. Based on what you described, leave the damper on 2 or 3.....if it's variable, keep it toward the 3 setting. And yes, getting sparks out of the pot when the new pellets fall in is good....shows a good flow of air through the pot, and means it's staying clean.

 

[SmokeyTheBear]

OK, just popping in because all this talk about pellets dancing caught my attention... My pellets never dance. Being serious here. (No comments about not giving them the right music... ok?) My stove heats just fine, but I never see the pellets dancing, even when the heat and air are turned up. Why is the pellet dance considered to be so important?

My pellets don't dance either, I think it's because of the type of stove we have.

You don't have a fire pot that requires the air flow alone to remove ash. Yours is a push it out stove, not a puffer. If you ever get a puffer you'll understand the importance of the dance.

 

[teetah222]

Push outs and puffers?? :-/

 

[jtakeman]

Push outs and puffers?? :-/

Push outs = Bottom Feeder were the pellets are feed in from the bottom of the burnpot. Forces the ash out of the burnpot as new pellets are feed in.

Puffers = Top feeders were the pellets drop into the burnpot. They don't force the ash out so you need to move the ash with air.

Push outs and puffers sounds like a new fangled bra or something.

 

[imacman]

Push outs and puffers?? :-/

Sounds kinky, doesn't it! ;-P

 

[becasunshine]

Well, I just started another thread, because I am getting what I consider to be a wide variation in output temps here.

We hit a heat output of 255'F a couple of days ago. Yesterday we hit about 230'F. Today we were struggling to get to 225'F.

We clean the stove faithfully every day: scrape the heat exhangers, vacuum the entire box and the burn pot, empty the ash bin, clean the glass, etc.

Today it seemed that our pellets burned down to almost gone before fresh pellets hit the pot. I just closed the damper back to 2, because I was getting that gut feeling that I was sending heat out of the exhaust pipe. I think it was because the pellets were burning down so far, so fast.

I closed the damper to 2 and the output temp started inching up.

Granted, I'm not using the most sophisticated device to measure temps. I'm using my deep fryer/candy thermometer inserted into the far left heat exchange tube.

It's not particularly windy outside, but it is cold, cloudy and humid.

These are the moments when I wonder if the OAK affects our output temps. (Sorry, sorry, the OAK thing again.)

The outside air temp is the only variable. We were using the same settings, we are burning the same pellets, and we had a 20'F-30'F variation in output temps.

I guess that the length of time that the stove's been running would affect the readings also- but the stove had been running for about 2 hours when I took a reading today. Is a 2 hour run time long enough to wait before taking a temp reading?

 

[SmokeyTheBear]

Push outs and puffers?? :-/

Sounds kinky, doesn't it! ;-P

Now do you oinkers think you can behave or do I need to cut your pellet ration in half?

 

[SmokeyTheBear]

Push outs and puffers?? :-/

Push outs = Bottom Feeder were the pellets are feed in from the bottom of the burnpot. Forces the ash out of the burnpot as new pellets are feed in.

Puffers = Top feeders were the pellets drop into the burnpot. They don't force the ash out so you need to move the ash with air.

Push outs and puffers sounds like a new fangled bra or something.

Now do you oinkers think you can behave or do I need to cut your pellet ration in half?

 

[Leadfoot]

Push outs and puffers?? :-/

Push outs = Bottom Feeder were the pellets are feed in from the bottom of the burnpot. Forces the ash out of the burnpot as new pellets are feed in.

Puffers = Top feeders were the pellets drop into the burnpot. They don't force the ash out so you need to move the ash with air.

Push outs and puffers sounds like a new fangled bra or something.

OMG! I thought I was past the tweaking part. So now I need pellets that have no legs to dance?

 

[SmokeyTheBear]

Push outs and puffers?? :-/

Push outs = Bottom Feeder were the pellets are feed in from the bottom of the burnpot. Forces the ash out of the burnpot as new pellets are feed in.

Puffers = Top feeders were the pellets drop into the burnpot. They don't force the ash out so you need to move the ash with air.

Push outs and puffers sounds like a new fangled bra or something.

OMG! I thought I was past the tweaking part. So now I need pellets that have no legs to dance?

Nope you have a pusher (if your sig is correct). No needy dancing pellets.

I'm one that needs the dancing ones.

 

[Leadfoot]

Push outs and puffers?? :-/

Push outs = Bottom Feeder were the pellets are feed in from the bottom of the burnpot. Forces the ash out of the burnpot as new pellets are feed in.

Puffers = Top feeders were the pellets drop into the burnpot. They don't force the ash out so you need to move the ash with air.

Push outs and puffers sounds like a new fangled bra or something.

OMG! I thought I was past the tweaking part. So now I need pellets that have no legs to dance?

What was I thinking.

 

[becasunshine]

I keep thinking about that Genesis song, you know the one-

"I can't dance,
I can't turn,
The only thing about me
Is the way that I burn..."

 

[teetah222]

Push outs and puffers?? :-/

Push outs = Bottom Feeder were the pellets are feed in from the bottom of the burnpot. Forces the ash out of the burnpot as new pellets are feed in.

Puffers = Top feeders were the pellets drop into the burnpot. They don't force the ash out so you need to move the ash with air.

Push outs and puffers sounds like a new fangled bra or something.

OMG! I thought I was past the tweaking part. So now I need pellets that have no legs to dance?

Nope you have a pusher (if your sig is correct). No needy dancing pellets.

I'm one that needs the dancing ones.

Actually, my EP is a puffer if that's the definition... the pellets fall from above the burn pot. I do have plenty of sparks flying, though, so I must have enough air flow. (Kind of had to wonder about the def's though... did sound a mite strange, or something. )

 

[SmokeyTheBear]

I was pointing out that Leadfoot has a pusher not you Haubera.

Actually, my EP is a puffer if that's the definition... the pellets fall from above the burn pot. I do have plenty of sparks flying, though, so I must have enough air flow. (Kind of had to wonder about the def's though... did sound a mite strange, or something. )