Cold Spell Prep cleaning/ evaluating.

[Countryboymo]

I did a full cleaning and leaf blower run on my stove since I am using hardwoods that it does not like and with my extended horizontal it becomes more troublesome. my horizontal run comes out under my deck stairs and puts the evl at the top end of specs. I think if I am going to continue to burn these 145 a ton pellets I should rethink my venting plan and box in a corner of one of the upstairs rooms and run my vent through the roof or find a good multifuel stove that will digest them better. I think the man burn issue is my venting which works great with softwoods but not so with most hardwoods.

I just flipped the stat and started liftoff since it is snowing and the temp is below 30. My heat pump rarely defrosts unless something is falling from the sky. It is going to get stupid cold and I need to get the basement warmed up so I can hold the strips at bay as much as possible until it drops below 10. My thermostat will shut the heat pump off below 10 degrees and then it is up to the strips and pellet stove.

I wish I could find a person with a castile or sante fe and see how Ozarks burn in their stove in comparison. Anyway time to go see how my first burn is going since cleaning.

 

[Countryboymo]

I just added a small stainless tube in the top hole in the burn pot cutting the size of that hole in half to hopefully help increase the flow in the bottom of the pot. I will probably just end up pulling more air in the air wash. I need to fully seal the hole around the thermocouple wire and around the seams of the stove and will probably gain more total air flow in the pot. When I ran softwoods I wouldn't hardly have any ash to dump in comparison and my fire was twice as active as these pellets.

If only I could adjust my combustion fan up 5 to 10% it would be a totally different burn but that goes right back to another post that my fellow sante fe castile owner wrote up.

 

[SwineFlue]

I just added a small stainless tube in the top hole in the burn pot cutting the size of that hole in half to hopefully help increase the flow in the bottom of the pot. I will probably just end up pulling more air in the air wash. I need to fully seal the hole around the thermocouple wire and around the seams of the stove and will probably gain more total air flow in the pot. When I ran softwoods I wouldn't hardly have any ash to dump in comparison and my fire was twice as active as these pellets.

If only I could adjust my combustion fan up 5 to 10% it would be a totally different burn but that goes right back to another post that my fellow sante fe castile owner wrote up.

Someone last year (DexterDay, maybe???) suggested blocking part of the airwash. I cut off a couple sections of old tadpole door gasket (an inch or two each) and stuck them into each end of my top-airwash to try it out.

 

[Countryboymo]

The size reduction on the top hole worked good until the pot got more full. I think I am just going to burn through these and re-evaluate the pellets vs a different venting alternative. Of course with softwoods I could let it burn for two days and not build up as much but then I wonder about vertical vent and softwoods with a good draft.... sigh