Cedarjunki
Minister of Fire
Maybe my reading was off.... with the cold snap were in, the stove has been running on 8-9 for 2 days straight.. hasn't skipped a beat.. "knock on wood" i also noticed its was only a few of the bags with smaller pellets..
I notice the thermo is bolted to the heat exchange area and not to the actual firebox. So the space where the fan blows thru needs to heat up significantly to raise the temp of the thermocouple.. so my guess as to why your reading is lower is because you have the larger convection in yours keeping the exchanger cooler..?. Just a theory