becasunshine
Minister of Fire
Amending this post: as of my latest experiments with feed and damper settings, feed 4, damper 3 seems to be working for us.
New Pellet Stove Came - Getting to the happy place - Update with pics
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ice, how long does it take to burn a bag of pellets? from what i could figure out by the post you are only on you 2nd bag after 48 hrs? from 9am the 24th to 11am the 26th. i know if i try to throttle my harman down to 1 bag a day i hardly get any heat at all On high it should burn alot more than that. To get 43000btu per hr on the p38 Harman it feeds 5.5 lbs per hr. 1 bag in 7.25 hrs. that it a rip roaring hot fire. It sound like your stove is not feeding enough fuel. to get 40,000btu it would have to feed about 5 lbs per hr. That should turn your room into a furnace!!
jtakeman
Minister of Fire
rickwa said:
That would be at 100% efficiency. Most stoves are more like 74 to 80%. If you plan on using any of the heating calculators. Better to us a lower max BTU for safety. Start using the full 100% and you will be cold or max out the stove in the extremes. Just FYI
rickwa said:
To answer the "revelation" question. I don't really know what the "Eureka" moment was. I just fired up the stove on Friday night and jacked it up. We had good heat coming out of it.
Rickwa, we weren't home for Xmas eve and most of Xmas day. So the stove only ran on Wed night, the first night i was annoyed with it. Hence why that first bag lasted so long.
OAK wise, we don't have one. Our hearth is brick throughout, floor to ceiling. gonna be a big pain to drill through that. Maybe an upgrade for the future. ash buildup right now is not that bad. After almost 2 bags of pellets there;s VERY little ash in the pan. Quite a bit of fly ash in inside the stove though. Interestingly enough, this morning i ran the stove at 4/3/1.5 (pellet, blower, damper) and the flame was dying out every so often. Pellets in the burn pot were burning out before they could be replenished. Turned the damper to Low and now got a rip-roaring fire. That brings me to my next point. What is considered a "lazy" fire? flames in my stove seem to get long regardless of what damper setting. Open damper, long strong flames. closed (low) damper still long flames that dance just as much.
EDIT - PICS
As you can see the the liner is coming out the chimney. Forgive the iPhone pics. My stove is not really on fire.
Also the stove is drying our shoes from all the rain and snow we just had. So far so good. I gotta go get me a lil shop vac to sucks out the ash from the inside. Man it's HOT in this room today. Time to turn it down a bit.
Jack Morrissey
Feeling the Heat
Hi, noticed you said you couldnt put a cieling fan in because of the sloping ceiling, but you can do this! most of the ceiling fans can accomodate a sloped ceiling
krooser
Minister of Fire
lexybird said:
EZ big fella... these here new fangled rabbit pellet burners will cook ya out of the house and are ez on the back, too. My old barn stays at 78F on medium and it will get north of 90 if I crank it... no gas/oil mix, chain sharpening, wedges, splitters, trips to the woods, etc...
Even the Amish around here have 'em...
jtakeman said:
the calculations i was using was the btu rating for my stove is 43,000 and that is at max feed rate of 5.5 lbs / hr. regardless of effiency it sounded like the stove only burned 2 bags over a period of 2 days, i was assuming continous operation. but when Ice posted back he stated it was intermittened use. that shoots down low feed rate theory
SmokeyTheBear
Minister of Fire
BTU said:
Just between us rabbit pellet burners BTU, I'd just as soon see them celly phones disappear.
There will eventually be many more fried brains than there already are, among other things.
But then whats a few microwaves between cells?
eschills
Member
ICE, Good to hear it's running better. Good luck Like the pics so far. I wouldn't worry about an OAK especially if you are that close to a door with the stove. It will get some air as long as the room you are in is not over insulated.
HopeItBurns
Member
Beca and Eschills quick question for either of you. Have you had any issues with the decorative trim piece right underneath the glass? It was driving me nuts yesterday. Something kept vibrating and i had to loosen one of the screws on the left side for a couple of turns.
becasunshine
Minister of Fire
IceNine, we haven't had vibrations in the decorative trim pieces around the glass. Our trivet, that decorative insert on the top front of the stove, used to vibrate in an annoying manner. For the first year we turned it upside down and it stopped vibrating- which told me that it wasn't sitting evenly in its insert space. We had no clue what to do about that.
When we had our end of the year cleaning the tech saw the trivet turned upside down and flipped it right side up. I told him why we'd turned it over and he suggested putting little silicon bumper pads under it.
We used four of those little silicon "dots" with self-adhesive on the flat side. You often see them on the back bottom corners of picture frames to keep the frame from scarring the wall and to level the picture vertically. You will sometimes see them as bumpers on cabinet and furniture doors too, to keep the door from scarring the frame. We found them in the area of the hardware store that sells felt pads for furniture legs. (Can't think of the names for those things.) We put four of these silicon bumper dots in place, one in each corner of the trivet insert space, on the little ledges on which the trivet sits. Those little ledges get warm to the touch when the stove is running but they don't get hot.
We worried a little about heat vs. melting, but a) it's a pellet stove, not a wood stove, most of the exterior surfaces don't get that hot with the exception of the glass, and b) the pads are made of silicon. Don't they make some bakeware items and cooking utensils out of silicon?
The glass on pellet stoves does get hot. Personally, I wouldn't use the silicon bumpers on the glass.
Anyway, it's worked for us, the trivet sits right side up and no more vibration. The silicon bumper pads haven't melted or caught on fire, neither has the adhesive on the backs of the pads. Your mileage may vary, so if you add a bumper pad of some sort to eliminate a rattle, keep an eye on it to make sure it doesn't melt or combust.
That solved our vibration issue.
When we had our end of the year cleaning the tech saw the trivet turned upside down and flipped it right side up. I told him why we'd turned it over and he suggested putting little silicon bumper pads under it.
We used four of those little silicon "dots" with self-adhesive on the flat side. You often see them on the back bottom corners of picture frames to keep the frame from scarring the wall and to level the picture vertically. You will sometimes see them as bumpers on cabinet and furniture doors too, to keep the door from scarring the frame. We found them in the area of the hardware store that sells felt pads for furniture legs. (Can't think of the names for those things.) We put four of these silicon bumper dots in place, one in each corner of the trivet insert space, on the little ledges on which the trivet sits. Those little ledges get warm to the touch when the stove is running but they don't get hot.
We worried a little about heat vs. melting, but a) it's a pellet stove, not a wood stove, most of the exterior surfaces don't get that hot with the exception of the glass, and b) the pads are made of silicon. Don't they make some bakeware items and cooking utensils out of silicon?
The glass on pellet stoves does get hot. Personally, I wouldn't use the silicon bumpers on the glass.
Anyway, it's worked for us, the trivet sits right side up and no more vibration. The silicon bumper pads haven't melted or caught on fire, neither has the adhesive on the backs of the pads. Your mileage may vary, so if you add a bumper pad of some sort to eliminate a rattle, keep an eye on it to make sure it doesn't melt or combust.
That solved our vibration issue.
Thanks Beca. Another weird thing that i noticed with my stove yesterday. I read your long post about how you guys run yours. 4 for pellet feed and 1.5/2 for the damper. The flame kept going out. Lowered the damper to 1 and i was still having an issue with the flame pretty much going out. Went down to Lo and started getting a rip roaring fire. Also the glass in mine keeps getting black. About 2-3 inches from the top. if i could guess it would have to do with the damper being so low but then again, i clean it out every day and it's really easy to just wipe off. It was REALLY awesome to not have to run the oil monster all weekend long. well maybe at night, but that's because my wife has a thing about unattended flames. Apparently furnaces don't count. beats me. Over the weekend though, i was in and out of my basement doing some work. It gets stupid cold in there without the furnace running. With the winter getting colder and the oil monster running less often i want to avoid any frozen pipes. I remember seeing some timer that a member here created that will run the furnace on an interval. Can't find the link anywhere though.
Another question for all the pellet brains out there. This might open a can of worms but what kind of flame should i be looking for from the stove? The current setup i have gets the flame roaring and it gets pretty much all the way to the heat exchange tubes. The fire is blue in the pot and bright yellow all the way through. Obviously when opening the damper up the blue flame gets larger, as it well should, and the flames are still "unusually" high. Ash has been consistently gray even in the burn pot (ash from when i turn the stove off and clean it up the next day).
Getting ready to plunge on my first ton but haven't burned through my first 6 bags of pellets that i bought. Finished up with the Hamer's (probably less than a quarter bag left in the hopper) and was very happy with them. Greene Team or Energex is next. Prices per ton are very close from dist i'm looking to use. 279/hamers, 280/green and 285/energex. Time to stop now. I've been writing this post for over 1 hour. Keep getting sidetracked at work. Damn people needing their PC's fixed don't they know i'm busy! lol
Another question for all the pellet brains out there. This might open a can of worms but what kind of flame should i be looking for from the stove? The current setup i have gets the flame roaring and it gets pretty much all the way to the heat exchange tubes. The fire is blue in the pot and bright yellow all the way through. Obviously when opening the damper up the blue flame gets larger, as it well should, and the flames are still "unusually" high. Ash has been consistently gray even in the burn pot (ash from when i turn the stove off and clean it up the next day).
Getting ready to plunge on my first ton but haven't burned through my first 6 bags of pellets that i bought. Finished up with the Hamer's (probably less than a quarter bag left in the hopper) and was very happy with them. Greene Team or Energex is next. Prices per ton are very close from dist i'm looking to use. 279/hamers, 280/green and 285/energex. Time to stop now. I've been writing this post for over 1 hour. Keep getting sidetracked at work. Damn people needing their PC's fixed
don't they know i'm busy! lolIceNine said:
The thing you're referring to is called the ThermGuard made by Bear Mtn Designs. I'll put the link to the company at the end of this.
It works by starting up your furnace or boiler on an electronic timer to run hot air or water through a zone that might freeze pipes if left off for long periods of time. The inventor/seller is John bridgeman, a forum member ("bridgerman")
www.bearmountaindesign.com
EDIT:
If you order online, enter code 101657512 in the vouncher/discount code for 10% off. The hit the recalculate button. Free shipping too
Ice, can't comment on how you should deal with the very high flame.....I never worked on a stove like yours, but the description of the flame/ash seems about right.....you want a bright yellow/white flame, some blue at the base, and greyish/brown ash.IceNine said:
here's 2 pics of what my previous Astoria stove, and my new Englander 10-cpm flame look like during "normal" burning:
Astoria:
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slls
Minister of Fire
So if i understand this correctly, it will just circulate the air in my forced hot air system. However, when this happens, what would be the temperature drop from essentially circulating cold air through the vents, since the furnace is not running. Guessing it would take a while to warm up the vents just by circulating the air that is in the house.
becasunshine
Minister of Fire
Edited:
My experiment with lower feed/lower damper settings did not work out well. I built up too much ash in the burn pot and the inside of the stove got very sooty.
Today, after cleaning, I decided to open the damper a bit and run on feed 4 to burn the stove hot and clean for a bit.
Right now we are on feed 4, damper 3 and surprise! MY PELLETS THEY DANCE! Don't know why I never saw this before. I guess I never gave it enough time and/or study.
The stove is running hotter too.
I am amending this post so that if others find it in the future it reflects a more accurate situation.
My experiment with lower feed/lower damper settings did not work out well. I built up too much ash in the burn pot and the inside of the stove got very sooty.
Today, after cleaning, I decided to open the damper a bit and run on feed 4 to burn the stove hot and clean for a bit.
Right now we are on feed 4, damper 3 and surprise! MY PELLETS THEY DANCE! Don't know why I never saw this before. I guess I never gave it enough time and/or study.
The stove is running hotter too.
I am amending this post so that if others find it in the future it reflects a more accurate situation.
Well i still can't run my stove on 4(feed) and ANY setting on the damper except closed. but that just causes a very dirty, incomplete burn without too much heat. Any opening on the damper just burns off the pellets before they can be replenished, leads to a very small flame and a cold Ice. I have since opted for feed at 5 and damper 2.5. Boy what a difference in the heat AND clean burn. Ran it from Friday morning until last night and did not have to clean the glass at all. Only ran it during the day so maybe 10-12 hours a day, max. I mean, i guess it COULD've used a little cleaning as there was some grey buildup on the top part of the glass but nothing like what it did before. Within 2-3 hours of burning the glass would get black and sooty. Nothing now. I'm feeding some crazy pellets into this thing but the heat output is awesome. Dunno why i can't get it to work at the optimum feeding level that the manual says i should (4). oh well, the stove kept my house at 72 all weekend long without needing the oil monster one bit. That's a win in my book.
slls said:
I think Macman was just concatenating the two ways ThermGuard works. One way is with a furnace. My cycling the furnace fan, you can move the warm air throughout the house and heat more evenly. This action can prevent freezing pipes in basements for instance if there is a register and return in the basement. ThermGuard also works with boilers to periodically circulate a small amount of hot water through the heating pipes to keep them from freezing while the stove is heating the house.
Macman said it in many fewer words!
I was looking at your device there bridgerman. I did test my house by running the fan only one day and unfortunately the basement did not get any heat whatsoever. That was when i wasn't running the stove at an optimal level though. I will give it another shot this weekend and see what happens. However, there is only 1 heat output vent in the basement and when the heat doesn't run it gets VERY cold in there. i've opted for using the furnace overnight and during the day when not at home. The layout in my house, unfortunately, doesn't allow me to not run the furnace at all and be worry free. At least, when the furnace does run, the radiant heat from it and the pipes keeps the basement in check. The stove is situated in a room that is an addition, slightly lower (about 4-5 steps) than the rest of the house. Can't figure out a way to get heat in the basement otherwise. keep up the good work though.
ice
ice
Hi Ice,
Just a couple of thoughts: Does your basement have a return as well as a vent? Without the return, the vent won't do much good. You could keep the basement door open to act as the return. Also, you could close down any of the vents in rooms that are warmed by the stove....more air pressure to the colder locations.
Cheers,
Bridgerman
Just a couple of thoughts: Does your basement have a return as well as a vent? Without the return, the vent won't do much good. You could keep the basement door open to act as the return. Also, you could close down any of the vents in rooms that are warmed by the stove....more air pressure to the colder locations.
Cheers,
Bridgerman
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