Is our 1994 Austroflamm Integra running efficiently?

[LuvMyStove]

GUYS - THANK YOU VERY MUCH FOR SHARING YOUR EXPERIENCE AND WISDOM. I have a couple more questions:
1) I had never heard of an OAK. Our stovepipe exits from the back of the stove and goes up about 4 ft before making a right angle turn through a finished wall and then through a hole in the foundation (there's a metal thimble protecting the finished wall). The stovepipe extends about 3 feet straight out from the foundation, with a "roof" lid at the end of it. Where would an OAK attach?
2) A problem that has developed with our Austroflamm over the past 18 years is that the burn pot fills with pellets/ash/klinker pretty quickly and (I think) reduces the airflow that feeds the flames. The higher I set the stove, the faster this happens. Last night at about 7 pm, I cleaned the burnpot and vacuumed out the ash from behind the lower cast wall. I set the heat control on "5" (the highest is 6) and started it up. The flames, although a very dark yellow, leaped to the top of the burn chamber. By 7 this morning, the flames were only about 6" high and the heat output was less than half of what it had been last night when we went to bed. The burnpot was full of pellets/klinker/ash. Is it possible that my combustion fan has slowed over the years (due to ash gradually getting into it?) so the air intake isn't strong enough? I bought a new combustion fan several years ago in case the original one died during a bad cold snap, but I don't want to change them if the fan isn't the problem. As mentioned below, I had turned the pentomieter (sp) to the left to slow the pellet feed. My friend's pellet stove (not an Austroflamm) is the opposite. His flames are whitish in color and the pellets pop right out of the burnpot. It's so extreme that I cannot see any pellets in the burnpot at all - just flame. I don't know if that's bad or good, but at least his burnpot doesn't plug up like ours.
3) This question is for member Bob Bare - I read your comment about the two adjustments on the pentomimeter (sp). The one I used is accessed from the outside using a precision screwdriver. Where is the second adjustment?

Thanks again guys - we learned a lot from your responses.

MY ORIGINAL POST: We have a 2,500 sq ft ranch (including basement) built in 1988 w/ decent insulation and new doors/windows. The basement is half-finished with an uninsulated wall in the middle. The pellet stove is on the finished side and usually heats the entire house. The hot air from the stove goes across the family room and up the stairway, which is next to the uninsulated wall. I built two small cold air returns (about 4" x 12") on the unfinished side to help get the warmth upstairs. We usually have to keep the family room about 15-20 degrees warmer to keep upstairs around 70. Outside, about 3/4s of the foundation sits into a hillside, leaving only about 1/4 exposed to the cold air. Normally the pellet stove heats the entire house, but right now the nights have been about -5 F and the days 10-15 F. The Austroflamm has six "settings" and I have been running the stove on #4, and we're having to use our electric baseboard to keep upstairs north of 65 F. My wife thinks the stove (which I keep relatively clean inside and out, and clean out the burn pot every day) isn't running efficiently. I think that it's just too darned cold for the amount of BTUs the stove can produce. Just now I turned it up to "5" to see if that helps, but can any of you share your opinions? I know that I need more cold air returns on the unfinished side, but we really can't do that because of the flooring upstairs. I was thinking of insulating the dividing wall in the basement, but the cold air from upstairs needs to get through that wall (and back to the stove) anyway. The flames in the stove are nice and high (up to the top) but look too yellow. I already have the pentometer (sp?) turned as far as it will go counter clockwise. If I understand the manual correctly, that means the air flow is maximized and the auger minimized (if I don't do that, the burn pot plugs up w/pellets and clinker when I try to turn up the stove). The motherboard was reconditioned last year. The stove pipe is relatively clean. Any thoughts on whether my wife expects too much of the stove, or is there something else I should be doing? Thank you in advance.

 

[Mt Bob]

Your wife expects too much,it is a space heater.What a lot of people forget is that every house has what I call a break point temperature.Cold air seepage,insulation,quality and"amount" of windows,ouside temperature,amount of sun load,and most important,wind load.All these things affect house heating.In my cabin I rarely get temp. above 70,but get really good aftenoon sun.When it hits -20 or more,my upstairs bedrooms are cold,or 10 degrees and 15 mph plus wind,same thing,stove not enough,cycle propane a little.Your partial underground basement also sucks your heat,ground is cold,only keeps part of wall out of wind.Love my big windows,but getting older like heat more have plans to remove several and board up.A cheap window film kit is worth inches,put it on my windows every fall.

 

[Mt Bob]

Now about your stove,sounds like it is burning about right for an older integra.You should never run the stove at max for more than an hour.Anything below that is fine.There are 2 trim potentiometers on the board,one for auger,one for combustion fan.You may be able to adjust a little better,but in my experience the settings mostly affect the lower heat settings.The area behind the lower plate in firebox(where the scrapers are)must be kept clean or will lose a lot of heat.Never run stove without the gasket behind that plate.Flames clear up to top seems to be normal in the higher settings.You could always buy a bigger stove,there are some really nice new ones out that are better at putting out more volume of heat.Also,keep the convection fan clean.It is a tangential slow speed unit,and ave cleaned them out and felt more/stronger heat 3 feet further away.Hope this helps.

 

[RKBAGUY]

I have a '91 Integra, so we're on the same page. It sounds like you can try a couple things.

1. Insulation is king. See what you can do about plugging air holes, outlets, and bare walls as much as possible. Even if it's only temporarily hanging a few quilts or cold air barriers across that bare wall, it might help.I also have a situation like you with a finished basement 2/3 below grade, and make no mistake - even those walls below grade get pretty cold. If you have no insulation in the finished walls, get it in there somehow, perhaps with a blow-in DIY solution.
   
2. Install an OAK, or Outside Air IntaKe. When the stove runs, it's creating a vacuum in the house by sending air up the chimney the same way you'd suck water from a glass of water with a straw. Without an OAK the stove tends to 'fight against itself' by creating negative pressure in the house that creeps in from those sneaky places in item 1.
3. Convert circulation ports from passive to powered. Even though you have openings between the floors, I've found a 'thermocline' occurs and just sits there. Adding fans might help, one set blowing hot air up, the other pulling cold air down. Otherwise I think you're going to get a bottleneck.
   
4. Supplement a bit, but NOT with your electric baseboard. That technology is ancient and inefficient. Get a decent quality ceramic-type electric heater (like the 'Pelonis' or other) for upstairs that you can plug in on days like we've been having. Your wallet will thank you.

Other than that, it sounds like everything else is alright. It's just been brutally cold up by us (I'm in NE PA) with temps dipping to single digits or even negative numbers overnight, so we have some extremes going on that are unseasonable and not normal.

 

[Jimmer]

We just bought a Quadrafire Classic Bay 1200 insert (my first pellet stove) and are having similar problems. We have a two story house with basement which was originally a one-story home. The stove is in a fairly large family room with a central staircase at one end. When the temperature drops below 20-30 degrees, I am fighting to heat the room with the stove to 65 degrees. I can feel heat going up the stairs which makes sense. Sitting next to the stove, I almost need a blanket due to the cold draft leading to the stove. It is also cranking through pellets pushing 3 bags a day on the cold days.

This is only our second winter in the home and our first cold winter and we have always had trouble heating the first floor. It has an old heat pump and both the heat vents and the intake are in the ceiling. I purchased the stove hoping to pull warm air from the stove into the first floor intake which sits just to the side of the fireplace in the ceiling. That doesn't appear to be happening. I can stand 6 feet from the stove and not really feel the heat although it is pumping it out. I had a service guy come out and look at it and he said it is burning properly. He blamed it on the airflow of the house and the staircase acting like a chimney which it probably is.

I've done a lot of research and at this point, my thinking is that an outside air intake (OAK) might solve my problem. The house isn't poorly insulated but it's not the best and there are cold spots. I have a feeling that the stove is pulling cold air through every crack in the house. Does this make sense and would an OAK help?

Finally, I don't see an easy way to install the OAK. The insert is in a masonry chimney but the chimney is not visible from the outside. If I go straight out, I will have to go through masonry, whatever is between the chimney and the outside wall and siding. There is an ash dump in the floor of chimney but I don't see a door anywhere outside where it might lead. It looks like it goes straight into a crawlspace or something. I can see where the chimney is supported in the basement but there is no access anywhere that I can see. Would a pipe leading to the ash dump work or do I have to cut a hole somewhere to the outside?

Any help or suggestions would be appreciated.

Thanks

 

[begreen]

Welcome Jimmer. In your case I think what is probably happening is that there are multiple leaks to outdoors on the floors above the stove floor. This is creating negative pressure in the lower floor area. In other words, your house is drafting like a chimney. Your best investment would be sealing up the house. I suspect a lot of the leaks are at the ceiling vents and ductwork joints, but other places are leaky windows, recessed lighting cans, attic doors, attic vents or access panels. See if you can get an energy audit done to pinpoint these areas.

 

[Jimmer]

So I just pulled out the stove and looked to see where the ash dump goes. It looks like it just goes into a masonry lined hole about six feet down. I don't see an opening anywhere but can feel some cold air coming from somewhere.

Could I just run a hose into this for outside air or to at least pull the air from somewhere other than my living room. Also, it looks like there is many years of ash piled up at the bottom of the hole. Maybe I can run a shop vac down there to suck out most of the ash so that I don't pull it into the stove.

 

[Jimmer]

Thanks Bgreen. We did actually have an energy audit last year. They pointed out a number of leaks such as ceiling lights which I have sealed as best I can. Since then, I've had insulation companies looks at it and tell me that things looks pretty well sealed in the attic -- at least the problems they pointed out.

One thing is that we don't have a problem heating the upstairs with the heat pump alone. Before the stove, the upstairs was nice and toasty while the downstairs was freezing. If anything, the upstairs has gotten colder since we installed the stove because the thermostat is at the top of the stairs.

 

[Mt Bob]

GUYS - THANK YOU VERY MUCH FOR SHARING YOUR EXPERIENCE AND WISDOM. I have a couple more questions:
1) I had never heard of an OAK. Our stovepipe exits from the back of the stove and goes up about 4 ft before making a right angle turn through a finished wall and then through a hole in the foundation (there's a metal thimble protecting the finished wall). The stovepipe extends about 3 feet straight out from the foundation, with a "roof" lid at the end of it. Where would an OAK attach?
2) A problem that has developed with our Austroflamm over the past 18 years is that the burn pot fills with pellets/ash/klinker pretty quickly and (I think) reduces the airflow that feeds the flames. The higher I set the stove, the faster this happens. Last night at about 7 pm, I cleaned the burnpot and vacuumed out the ash from behind the lower cast wall. I set the heat control on "5" (the highest is 6) and started it up. The flames, although a very dark yellow, leaped to the top of the burn chamber. By 7 this morning, the flames were only about 6" high and the heat output was less than half of what it had been last night when we went to bed. The burnpot was full of pellets/klinker/ash. Is it possible that my combustion fan has slowed over the years (due to ash gradually getting into it?) so the air intake isn't strong enough? I bought a new combustion fan several years ago in case the original one died during a bad cold snap, but I don't want to change them if the fan isn't the problem. As mentioned below, I had turned the pentomieter (sp) to the left to slow the pellet feed. My friend's pellet stove (not an Austroflamm) is the opposite. His flames are whitish in color and the pellets pop right out of the burnpot. It's so extreme that I cannot see any pellets in the burnpot at all - just flame. I don't know if that's bad or good, but at least his burnpot doesn't plug up like ours.
3) This question is for member Bob Bare - I read your comment about the two adjustments on the pentomimeter (sp). The one I used is accessed from the outside using a precision screwdriver. Where is the second adjustment?

Thanks again guys - we learned a lot from your responses.

MY ORIGINAL POST: We have a 2,500 sq ft ranch (including basement) built in 1988 w/ decent insulation and new doors/windows. The basement is half-finished with an uninsulated wall in the middle. The pellet stove is on the finished side and usually heats the entire house. The hot air from the stove goes across the family room and up the stairway, which is next to the uninsulated wall. I built two small cold air returns (about 4" x 12") on the unfinished side to help get the warmth upstairs. We usually have to keep the family room about 15-20 degrees warmer to keep upstairs around 70. Outside, about 3/4s of the foundation sits into a hillside, leaving only about 1/4 exposed to the cold air. Normally the pellet stove heats the entire house, but right now the nights have been about -5 F and the days 10-15 F. The Austroflamm has six "settings" and I have been running the stove on #4, and we're having to use our electric baseboard to keep upstairs north of 65 F. My wife thinks the stove (which I keep relatively clean inside and out, and clean out the burn pot every day) isn't running efficiently. I think that it's just too darned cold for the amount of BTUs the stove can produce. Just now I turned it up to "5" to see if that helps, but can any of you share your opinions? I know that I need more cold air returns on the unfinished side, but we really can't do that because of the flooring upstairs. I was thinking of insulating the dividing wall in the basement, but the cold air from upstairs needs to get through that wall (and back to the stove) anyway. The flames in the stove are nice and high (up to the top) but look too yellow. I already have the pentometer (sp?) turned as far as it will go counter clockwise. If I understand the manual correctly, that means the air flow is maximized and the auger minimized (if I don't do that, the burn pot plugs up w/pellets and clinker when I try to turn up the stove). The motherboard was reconditioned last year. The stove pipe is relatively clean. Any thoughts on whether my wife expects too much of the stove, or is there something else I should be doing? Thank you in advance.

The second one is on the backside of the control board at the top.If you do not have the integra tech manual I could try to post it here,or email it to you.The trim pots can also go bad with time,but not as frequent as a harman.You have to pull the left side off to see the back of the board,so have a can of electrical contact cleaner handy and spray them out.You can leave side of stove off while tinkering with adjustments,as nothing happens fast on the old ones,move it a little and wait 30-60 min. to judge what it did.Your stove should not knock down that much overnite,showing classic signs of beginning to plug up.Could be in the pipes,exhaust blower area,bottom of tubes behind plate,top of the upper plate,and,most important of all,the small rectangular holes behind the tubes,behind the lower plate.Have seen people miss this.Gets caked and hard,have to bend a coat hanger to clean them out.I doubt your house is tightly sealed enough to be the problem,but you could open a door or window when it is starting to act up and look for change.If you want an oak,don't forget this is an european stove,and there is no direct connection inside the stove,you will see this when you pull off control panel.European oak setups come with a shutoff valve so no air leak into house when stove is not running.Other than these things,it is about a 40,000 btu stove,and it probably takes more than that to heat your house at those temps.

 

[LuvMyStove]

The second one is on the backside of the control board at the top.If you do not have the integra tech manual I could try to post it here,or email it to you.The trim pots can also go bad with time,but not as frequent as a harman.You have to pull the left side off to see the back of the board,so have a can of electrical contact cleaner handy and spray them out.You can leave side of stove off while tinkering with adjustments,as nothing happens fast on the old ones,move it a little and wait 30-60 min. to judge what it did.Your stove should not knock down that much overnite,showing classic signs of beginning to plug up.Could be in the pipes,exhaust blower area,bottom of tubes behind plate,top of the upper plate,and,most important of all,the small rectangular holes behind the tubes,behind the lower plate.Have seen people miss this.Gets caked and hard,have to bend a coat hanger to clean them out.I doubt your house is tightly sealed enough to be the problem,but you could open a door or window when it is starting to act up and look for change.If you want an oak,don't forget this is an european stove,and there is no direct connection inside the stove,you will see this when you pull off control panel.European oak setups come with a shutoff valve so no air leak into house when stove is not running.Other than these things,it is about a 40,000 btu stove,and it probably takes more than that to heat your house at those temps.

Hi Bob - Hope you don't mind my picking your brain as I'll have a lot of questions. I clean the stove every month or so, taking out the top and bottom cast iron plates to vacuum around the tubes, and use an old paint brush to clean out the cavities at the top of the burn chamber. Then I clean out the smoke exhaust chamber behind the tubes (that also lets me access the square exhaust holes behind the tubes). I used to remove the exhaust fan from its housing regularly but the screws started to strip so I don't do it more than once or twice a year. I try to clean out the dust on that side of the stove by running a flexible house in through the smoke exhaust chamber, or from the other direction by pushing the hose into the bottom of the stove pipe and then bending it in toward the exhaust fan. So now you know what I clean, but where else can the stove be getting plugged up? The only thing I can think of is the air intake in the back of the stove. If I remove the air sensor I could probably run a a vacuum hose in from the back of the stove, but is it possible that the air intake is getting blocked by a dust buildup? The only other possibility is the top of the burn chamber plugging up. As I said before, I use a paint brush to knock down as much ash as I can, but I can't see where the smoke exits the chamber to clean out that opening. Finally, what is a trim pot? Thanks again for your help - Bill

 

[RKBAGUY]

Bill, when you open the stove every few days to empty the burn pot, use a shop vac or ash vacuum and get the area underneath the burn pot opening. I cut a hole in the lid of a quart soup container and slide it onto the hose as a gasket to enhance suction. I think you might be surprised by what you hear rattling into the vacuum. Obviously, just be sure to wait long enough for any ashes to extinguish before performing this procedure.

 

[Mark_ms]

........ If I remove the air sensor I could probably run a a vacuum hose in from the back of the stove, but is it possible that the air intake is getting blocked by a dust buildup?

The air sensor will collect all sorts of dust and pet hair. Gently remove it from its mount, if iit s covered gently remove with a brush or low pressure compressed air, before replacing, vaccum the intake of any further dust and stray pellets

 

[LuvMyStove]

The air sensor will collect all sorts of dust and pet hair. Gently remove it from its mount, if iit s covered gently remove with a brush or low pressure compressed air, before replacing, vaccum the intake of any further dust and stray pellets

Thanks Mark. See my reply to RBKA below.

 

[LuvMyStove]

Bill, when you open the stove every few days to empty the burn pot, use a shop vac or ash vacuum and get the area underneath the burn pot opening. I cut a hole in the lid of a quart soup container and slide it onto the hose as a gasket to enhance suction. I think you might be surprised by what you hear rattling into the vacuum. Obviously, just be sure to wait long enough for any ashes to extinguish before performing this procedure.

 

[LuvMyStove]

Thanks also. I'm shutting the stove down and will be trying to clean out the air intake from both the front and back of the stove. I just hate removing and cleaning the air sensor!

 

[Mt Bob]

Trim potentiometer.That is the little thing you adjusted.Everyone calls them trim pots.Others are right cleaning the air sensor is important,2 screws,spray with electronics cleaner.You should be pulling the exhaust pipe off the back of the stove and cleaning in both directions.This stove has a slight upward rise just past the convection blower and can get a buildup of ashes there.2 sides to airflow in and out.Clean trim pots with cleaner,make shure they react with stove running.Totaly clean stove and chimney(your stove definatly has a problem).Also when you pull out air sensor look for any discoloration on circuit board,they do sometimes go bad.Trim pots on control can go bad(rare).Just because board was rebuilt means nothing,have seen capacitors fail in months.Make shure stove and intake/exhaust is absoulty(sic)clean,then suspect electronics.Also,there are several simple tests you can do on the control board(Need a simple volt meter).If you narrow it down to electronics,I can send you some info.Bob

 

[LuvMyStove]

Trim potentiometer.That is the little thing you adjusted.Everyone calls them trim pots.Others are right cleaning the air sensor is important,2 screws,spray with electronics cleaner.You should be pulling the exhaust pipe off the back of the stove and cleaning in both directions.This stove has a slight upward rise just past the convection blower and can get a buildup of ashes there.2 sides to airflow in and out.Clean trim pots with cleaner,make shure they react with stove running.Totaly clean stove and chimney(your stove definatly has a problem).Also when you pull out air sensor look for any discoloration on circuit board,they do sometimes go bad.Trim pots on control can go bad(rare).Just because board was rebuilt means nothing,have seen capacitors fail in months.Make shure stove and intake/exhaust is absoulty(sic)clean,then suspect electronics.Also,there are several simple tests you can do on the control board(Need a simple volt meter).If you narrow it down to electronics,I can send you some info.Bob

Thanks again Bob. Yesterday I cleaned out the air intake with a shop vac on both ends - one blowing and the other sucking - so I'm pretty sure the air intake is clear. Cleaned the stovepipe. While I didn't inspect the air sensor closely (I removed it before I cleaned the air intake tube), it generally looked good. A couple years ago - and don't ask me how it happened - the air sensor got melted from some kind of backflash and I replaced it. Yesterday and today the burnpot continued filling up with ash/klinker/pellets so I've been cleaning and restarting it every 12 hours. The flames are still too orange and blacken the glass too soon. Before I started it today I took the side panel off and turned the air potentiometer to about 3 o'clock as you face it. I had already turned the auger potentiometer back to 8 o'clock as you face it. There didn't seem to be any change in how it's burning, and maybe just a bit of ash in the tray. When we first got the stove, if I had the air potentiometer set too high, the flames would be whitish and the pellets would be popping out of the burnpot. The ash tray would be spilling over when I opened the door to clean. Now there's hardly any ash in the tray - most everything stays in the pot. If I have time tomorrow I'm going to pull the combustion fan and clean out the housing. I mentioned in an earlier post that the screws have stripped their holes so I try to clean that area from other directions but to eliminate it as a possible blockage I have to see what's in there. I'll let you know what it looks like. but my guess is that I won't find any serious blockage. I think I have a can of electrical cleaner (aerosol, Radio Shak) but don't know where to spray the control board. Do you spray the board itself or just certain contacts? Same question with the air sensor. I'd be concerned about damaging the circuits with the spray pressure. Do I spray them from a safe distance, like maybe a foot? I'll pick up a volt meter for testing - Bill

 

[Mt Bob]

Spray the pots,spray anything,will not hurt(unplugged,of course).If you do not have an exhaust blockage,send both boards and air flow sensor to a board repair guy,perhaps jim.Also,unplug and plug back in both boards and sensor,inspect for poor conection,spray all connectors (and board connectors) with the cleaner.Good luck.

 

[LuvMyStove]

Spray the pots,spray anything,will not hurt(unplugged,of course).If you do not have an exhaust blockage,send both boards and air flow sensor to a board repair guy,perhaps jim.Also,unplug and plug back in both boards and sensor,inspect for poor conection,spray all connectors (and board connectors) with the cleaner.Good luck.

Who's Jim? When we had the motherboard fixed a couple years ago, we had to send it to California. I'll probably have to wait on getting them repaired because our back up heat is electric baseboard, which is why we burn pellets. I might ask you how to test the control board with the voltmeter (where to attach the contacts). If the control board tests to the manual's specs (I think it's -5 to 0 to +5?) can I eliminate that as a cause? Thanks.

 

[Mt Bob]

If you know about the 5 volt dc tests,you have the right info.It will tell you the board can react.While doing these tests,pay attention to the motors speeding up and slowing down.Jim is the guy in calif. that fixes these,he sometimes posts here.If the board 5 volt readings)reacts when changing the combustion settings but the blower does not,will tell you something.

 

[lakensea]

If you know about the 5 volt dc tests,you have the right info.It will tell you the board can react.While doing these tests,pay attention to the motors speeding up and slowing down.Jim is the guy in calif. that fixes these,he sometimes posts here.If the board 5 volt readings)reacts when changing the combustion settings but the blower does not,will tell you something.

I think you mean Joe - http://www.pelletstoverepair.com/ . He's the man - has helped me out a few times.

 

[Mt Bob]

I think you mean Joe - http://www.pelletstoverepair.com/ . He's the man - has helped me out a few times.

My bad,you are right!

 

[LuvMyStove]

If you know about the 5 volt dc tests,you have the right info.It will tell you the board can react.While doing these tests,pay attention to the motors speeding up and slowing down.Jim is the guy in calif. that fixes these,he sometimes posts here.If the board 5 volt readings)reacts when changing the combustion settings but the blower does not,will tell you something.

Hi Bob - I removed the combustion blower today and found no blockages. That completes the search for a blockage. I bought a voltage tester and will probably test the user control board tomorrow. I was planning to wait until the stove shuts down and then turn it back on w/o a fire. Figured that would still send current through the air and auger circuits and I could check the voltage by turning the adjustments. Do you think I need to have the stove running with a fire in it during the test? If I turn the control knob when the stove is running, the height of the flames increase and I think the combustion blower speeds up - at least it sounds like it (it's kind of hard to tell which fan is making the noise!). In that way, I think the control board is working. And yet the burnpot is still filling up with ash and, after 12 hours or so, starts smothering the flames and blackening the glass. I also found really black soot in the combustion blower housing today that we should not be getting. I'm thinking about turning both the air and auger controls back to 12 o'clock after I test the circuits and see what happens. My wife is convinced that it's the Eprom chip on the motherboard. The shop manual makes it sound like I'd be able to change it, but I'm not sure how to pry it out. Thanks again - Bill

 

[Mt Bob]

Follow directions in the repair manual.Does not have to be burning.Auger motor easy-time the light blinks.Should leave combustion blower side cover off so you can determin if the motor speeds up and slows down when changing the pot.Eprom is a possibility,rare(joe sells them).I suspect your convection motor is not coming up to speed for what the programming wants(eprom).However,I have seen bad capacitors on the master board affect motor speed.If your voltage tests at the control board do show change but motor not reacting,you found something.Magic marker line on motor makes it easier to see rpm changes.If you do not have the test procedure,go to pelletstoverepair.com and click on-free austroflamm manual.

 

[RKBAGUY]

Bob, what would cause the convection fan speed to hunt? I have a rise and fall on fan speed while running, and I wonder if it could be a/c line voltage oscillation, or something else.