Pellet ash "crust" in Harman P68

[Fixedblade]

I've owned this Harman P-68 for 4 heating seasons and burn around 6 tons a year. This season a new phenomenon has developed that is puzzling to me and my Harman dealer says he doesn't know what to do to remedy it. I have a significant buildup of burned ash that gathers at the lip of the burn pot and forms into a thick crust. The crust becomes solidified and too heavy to get pushed over the edge of the burn pot into the ash bin by the advancing ash. After being away at work for the day I come home and there's a huge clump of ash crust that has to be manually knocked over the edge. The heat doesn't seem effected but the flames are yellow and lazy looking until it's knocked off. I burn various softwood pellets but they all seem to do the same thing. I've cleaned the stove twice in the last couple weeks and looked for air leaks but can't see any. Any thoughts or ideas of what's causing this problem???

FB in Vt.

 

[Trickyrick]

I've owned this Harman P-68 for 4 heating seasons and burn around 6 tons a year. This season a new phenomenon has developed that is puzzling to me and my Harman dealer says he doesn't know what to do to remedy it. I have a significant buildup of burned ash that gathers at the lip of the burn pot and forms into a thick crust. The crust becomes solidified and too heavy to get pushed over the edge of the burn pot into the ash bin by the advancing ash. After being away at work for the day I come home and there's a huge clump of ash crust that has to be manually knocked over the edge. The heat doesn't seem effected but the flames are yellow and lazy looking until it's knocked off. I burn various softwood pellets but they all seem to do the same thing. I've cleaned the stove twice in the last couple weeks and looked for air leaks but can't see any. Any thoughts or ideas of what's causing this problem???

FB in Vt.

I have seen this to varying degrees and pellet selection is the solution. I find that the fluffy ash producing pellets never hav this problem but the more dense the ash the more likely the crust is to form. The Sumersets im burning now create a very slight crust while the Hardwood heats used to really crust up.

My solution was to mix the pellets up a little, every other bag was hardwood heats then Lignetics. Problem was gone. If I ran three bags of hardwwods in a row the problem came back...

Just my experience.

 

[richg]

I had a similar issue with Fireside Ultras which are a softwood pellet made by Energex. They would make a strange ash clumping at the lip of my P61 burnpot, which sometimes would grdually flow over the edge and make formations like icicles. hardwood pellets did not do this. Mind you, I loved the heat output of the Firesides.

 

[aaronnoel]

ya, my p68 does this with the Cubex , thats hardwood pellets, very hot burn so I don't worry.