P68 settings?

[jbmaine]

Hi all, I purchased a P68 this spring, have had it setup and ready to go in my basement for some time and finally the weather is turning cool enough to use it. Five times we have had overnight temps in the forties and I have fired up the stove for a few hours in the morning to take the chill out of the house. So far I am amazed at how much heat this stove puts out. So much better than my old wood stove. I have a couple of floor register's hooked up with fans to draw heat into the main floor of the house and that too is working well. I have been running the stove in stove temp mode set at low with pellet feed rate at #4. This morning the outside temp was 42 degrees. The basement temp was 65 and the living-room temp was 66.I ran the stove for four hours and shut it off when the basement hit 71 and the living-room 69.5 . I was wondering how low can you run this stove? the pellet feed goes down to #1 but it seems that would not supply enough pellets to keep it going. I know I can try it to see but is that bad for the stove? Also is there a chart or something to relate the numbers on the pellet feed control to pounds of pellets per hr. I haven't really run the stove long enough to get a feel for how long it takes to go through a bag of pellets. Running the stove as I mentioned above, the pellets are burned low in the burn pot, in other words I can see the holes in the burn pot. the pellets are totally burned before getting that far. Is this OK? I am burning Okanagan pellets.
Thanks everyone
JB

 

[summit]

leave the feed adjustment midway (3 or 4) and turnup if you need more.. other than that, just set it and let it do its thing... also, when it gets cold all day, everyday, don't be afraid to use the "stove temp" mode.

 

[lessoil]

leave the feed adjustment midway (3 or 4) and turnup if you need more.. other than that, just set it and let it do its thing... also, when it gets cold all day, everyday, don't be afraid to use the "stove temp" mode.

Yep, we leave ours on 4 and just turn up the temp as needed.
Enjoy the stove!! We love ours!!
Sorry OPEC, we reduced our oil consumption last year by 500 gal and are warmer.

 

[LIpelletpig]

Yes you can run it on the #1 setting. It won't go out. It will be a very small fire in the burn pot but in my own opinion I rather have a small flame then no flame running it in stove temp.. I think the stove works harder and burns more pellets when the stove shuts down and sits for a few minutes (or hours) and then has to restart. This time a year though the stove doesn't have to run 24/7. It will take some time getting used to but in my opinion I ran my stove in manual mode all year last year and on stove temp. Room temp has so many variables (near an outside door, drafts, windows etc..)and with the history of Harman with igniters I would be cautious with off/on ignitions...

 

[jbmaine]

Thanks for the replies everyone. Can anyone tell me how long a bag of pellets should last as it relates to the numbers on the pellet feed dial?
Thanks
JB

 

[BJN644]

I not trying to be a smart @ss, but why don't you just let the stove handle things for you? You have one of the most high tech stoves on the market, why would you want to defeat all the controls you just paid a lot of money for? Put the stove on room temp, the feed on 4 and let her rip. The stove will vary the feed rate as needed based on what the temp probe is telling the stove. My P43, same electronics as yours, will crank out major heat until the controls are satisfied, then it just idles along with barely a flame and low fan, all automatic. I think you will be amazed at what that stove can do.

 

[jbmaine]

I not trying to be a smart @ss, but why don't you just let the stove handle things for you? You have one of the most high tech stoves on the market, why would you want to defeat all the controls you just paid a lot of money for? Put the stove on room temp, the feed on 4 and let her rip. The stove will vary the feed rate as needed based on what the temp probe is telling the stove. My P43, same electronics as yours, will crank out major heat until the controls are satisfied, then it just idles along with barely a flame and low fan, all automatic. I think you will be amazed at what that stove can do.

I understand what you are saying and may end up doing that but until I can see how close I can keep the basement temp( where the stove is) to the first floor temp, I am exploring all my options. So far I can keep the two temps within a couple of degrees of each other but as the temp drops this winter this may change. It would do no good to keep the stove on room temp if the temp on the first floor drops twice as fast as the temp in the basement. My wife is disabled and can't keep going up and down the basement stairs to adjust the settings when I am at work ,and installing the stove on the first floor was not an option for us. I may look at extending the temp probe up to the first floor, not sure yet. One of the reasons we bought this stove was because of the different options it gave us to run it and right now I am just trying to see what works best for us. Would you mind telling me about how long a bag of pellets lasts you? We bought four tons and hope they will last all winter burning 24/7.
Thanks
JB

 

[iceman]

with my stove on stove temp feed at 3 and dial at 2 it usually goes for 24 hrs on a bag.....or really close to it...you will find that the stove takes more than 1 bag mine takes 1 and say a quarter or 1/3 of another (48-50 pounds) so when i run on 2 i know i am good for at least 24 hrs as i fill it up every morning before i go to work

 

[Delta-T]

JB- just for clarity, the "feed adjuster" (with #'s 1-6) doesn't really tell the stove how many pellets to burn. It's a weird trim adjustment that sets the maximum feed time, in 10 second intervals. The other knob, with the degrees on the outer edge and 1-7 on the inner tells the stove how many pellets to burn. In room temp, you have no control as to how many "pounds" of pellets are burned. The stove does whatever is necessary to get to and maintain your desired temp. In stove temp, the P68 looks only at the 1-7 and those are relative to pounds per hour (1 is closer to 3/4 lb per hour and 7 is very close to 7 lbs per hour). Those numbers are not relative to temp, just as the temp is not relative to pounds. Best common practice is to leave the "feed adjuster" at about 4 and ignore it forever. Tweaking the knob wil not increase efficiency or regulate the temp. If you desire to control the amount of pellets that are burned you must use "stove temp" mode. Hope some of this is helpfull.

 

[jbmaine]

JB- just for clarity, the "feed adjuster" (with #'s 1-6) doesn't really tell the stove how many pellets to burn. It's a weird trim adjustment that sets the maximum feed time, in 10 second intervals. The other knob, with the degrees on the outer edge and 1-7 on the inner tells the stove how many pellets to burn. In room temp, you have no control as to how many "pounds" of pellets are burned. The stove does whatever is necessary to get to and maintain your desired temp. In stove temp, the P68 looks only at the 1-7 and those are relative to pounds per hour (1 is closer to 3/4 lb per hour and 7 is very close to 7 lbs per hour). Those numbers are not relative to temp, just as the temp is not relative to pounds. Best common practice is to leave the "feed adjuster" at about 4 and ignore it forever. Tweaking the knob wil not increase efficiency or regulate the temp. If you desire to control the amount of pellets that are burned you must use "stove temp" mode. Hope some of this is helpfull.

Thanks for the info, It seems the description in the manual is some what ambiguous ( at least to me) as to what the controls do. You have helped to clarify it for me, thanks. Another question if you don't mind. When going from low to high ( in stove or room temp) am I only increasing the speed of the fan? In other words is that the only function of low-high, just a rheostat.
Thanks
JB

 

[BJN644]

I not trying to be a smart @ss, but why don't you just let the stove handle things for you? You have one of the most high tech stoves on the market, why would you want to defeat all the controls you just paid a lot of money for? Put the stove on room temp, the feed on 4 and let her rip. The stove will vary the feed rate as needed based on what the temp probe is telling the stove. My P43, same electronics as yours, will crank out major heat until the controls are satisfied, then it just idles along with barely a flame and low fan, all automatic. I think you will be amazed at what that stove can do.

I understand what you are saying and may end up doing that but until I can see how close I can keep the basement temp( where the stove is) to the first floor temp, I am exploring all my options. So far I can keep the two temps within a couple of degrees of each other but as the temp drops this winter this may change. It would do no good to keep the stove on room temp if the temp on the first floor drops twice as fast as the temp in the basement. My wife is disabled and can't keep going up and down the basement stairs to adjust the settings when I am at work ,and installing the stove on the first floor was not an option for us. I may look at extending the temp probe up to the first floor, not sure yet. One of the reasons we bought this stove was because of the different options it gave us to run it and right now I am just trying to see what works best for us. Would you mind telling me about how long a bag of pellets lasts you? We bought four tons and hope they will last all winter burning 24/7.
Thanks
JB

I think extending the temp. probe to the second floor would be your best bet for what you want to do. I'm kind of doing what you are right now, seeing what air temp it takes to get the rest of the house warm, but stickily in room temp mode.

I think 4 tons is a safe bet, it's my first full year too but everyone I have talked to who burns 24/7 uses between 4 and 5 tons depending on the house and how hot they like it.

The low / high knob is baseically a rheostat, the fan will still run on high with the knob low, just not as soon. If you read about Harman's electronics the knob may also feed info to the stove as to the feed rate as well, not sure about that, someone like Summit could probably explain better.

 

[Delta-T]

JB- just for clarity, the "feed adjuster" (with #'s 1-6) doesn't really tell the stove how many pellets to burn. It's a weird trim adjustment that sets the maximum feed time, in 10 second intervals. The other knob, with the degrees on the outer edge and 1-7 on the inner tells the stove how many pellets to burn. In room temp, you have no control as to how many "pounds" of pellets are burned. The stove does whatever is necessary to get to and maintain your desired temp. In stove temp, the P68 looks only at the 1-7 and those are relative to pounds per hour (1 is closer to 3/4 lb per hour and 7 is very close to 7 lbs per hour). Those numbers are not relative to temp, just as the temp is not relative to pounds. Best common practice is to leave the "feed adjuster" at about 4 and ignore it forever. Tweaking the knob wil not increase efficiency or regulate the temp. If you desire to control the amount of pellets that are burned you must use "stove temp" mode. Hope some of this is helpfull.

Thanks for the info, It seems the description in the manual is some what ambiguous ( at least to me) as to what the controls do. You have helped to clarify it for me, thanks. Another question if you don't mind. When going from low to high ( in stove or room temp) am I only increasing the speed of the fan? In other words is that the only function of low-high, just a rheostat.
Thanks
JB

Yeah, the "H" and "L" are just to control the blower speed (room air). You can set them as you like. The stove can/will default the fan speed to a lower setting if the machine gets too cool to operate efficiently (say you are in stove temp and you have the selector on 1 or 2 of a possible 7, and the fan is on high, it will cool off the combustion temp and the fan will slow or shut off to re-constitute the heat, and then turn back to where you've set it). Stove will also turn that blower up if you have the fan set so low that the machine heats up. I agree that the manual is unclear, at best, and confusing to many.

 

[jbmaine]

Thanks again everyone for all the info and input. We really appreciate it
JB