keep finding stove off

[ramdez]

I have a 1 month old Harman p61a and 3 times this week i have come down to find it off with the status light blinking 5 times "unable to ignite in 36 minute ignition window" i turn it off, turn it back on and it begins to feed pellets into the burn pot and then lights right up. The burn pot isn't full maybe 2 clumps of ash but was puzzles me is that if it failed to ignite I would expect to find a handful of unlit pellets in the burn pot but there isn't a single fresh pellet in there. It's as if it burned out gracefully but then tried to light without feeding pellets. i am going to open a case with my dealer but wanted to see what the forum said. I have plenty of pellets in the hopper when this happens and i clean my burn pot daily. Also my feed rate is set to the highest, temp is 60 on room temp with auto lighting.

Something that i have considered was if the power tripped out but I can confirm that it wasn't housewide cuz my clocks are working fine. I guess i could do more testing and put an LED clock in the same outlet. But i do not know if it would show this same error code in that situation or if it would just sit off. Actually (brain trace here), if the power did go off i wouldn't always find the stove so 'gracefully' burned out of pellets, it would be at a more random spot in the cycle than completely off.

 

[BenG]

Sounds like the auger stopped feeding pellets and the ones that were in there burned up.

 

[Delta-T]

you may have some slight bridging, so some pellets feed and ignite, but not enough to get the machine to operating temp. stove in basement? ESP probe must read 90 °F to know that its lit. If you have cold basement it might trick the stove into thinking its not getting lit.

 

[ramdez]

yes it's in the finished lower level of the house but that level is usually up to 65deg before i leave verifying that it's on. would that still be an issue? i hope i can leave it drop below 65, i usually leave the thermostat at 60-65 in room temp mode all the time and it's still kicking off. i do have an outside air kit, n hot but chitty ashy pellets. they're PureFlame from pelletsales.com. i have to keep my feed speed at 6 to maintain a nice flame or it never gets above 3" high

 

[Delta-T]

if you run it on stove temp and crank it up does your burnpot fill with pellets? if not it could really be some slight bridging. super cold OA could also be a factor in tricking the ESP probe into thinking its not up to 90.

 

[ramdez]

sorry i misread your post, on stove temp it runs great and will continue to run great. tho i haevn't run it very long like that. the temps by me haven't dropped below 20 when it would shut off

 

[Mr Fixit]

Sounds to me like the stove isn't getting hot enough during the startup cycle to trip the sensors before it times out. I suspect that the stove does ignite as it should and burns the available pellets in the pot, but fails to reach the required internal temperature to tell the circuit board to keep feeding pellets after the start up sequence time has expired. I would suspect poor pellet quality, too much air, or not enough fuel (auger trim). There may be other settings available on your stove that could be investigated, I am not familiar with that model.

 

[ramdez]

well i suspected bad pellet quality but i think i found 'part' of the problem today. i had been hearing this clanking for a few days and being the first pellet stove i was ever around i always attributed it to a pellet stuck sideways and the auger crushing it. well tonight when i went home i was surprised to find the stove actually running so i went over all proud and started to scrape the burn pot and found a 3/4 bolt in the ash in the burn pot.. it looks like a fat allen head but regardless i turned it off and called my dealer and hopefuly tomorrow we'll work it out. i did hear the clank again while i was there so i don't know if ther'es another bolt in there but thinking back the sounds that i heard were likely mechanical and hopefully my gears/auger is OK.

is there anything that i should make sure the tech investigates while he's there to make sure the thing is investigated thoroughly? thanks for all your help but i hope that when this is resolved my issue will be gone. I"ll let everyone know how it turns out. thanks for your help.

and BenG, you were exactly right i think, the auger 'stopped' feeding pellets. it might have tripped the motor or jammed it long enough to throw the 5 blink code but i can confirm that whenever i walked over and simply turned the stove off and back on that it didn't have a single sound like it was jammed or stuck in anyway.