Pellet bin feed issues

[Mortalis]

Hello all,

New contributor, new pellet stove owner. I replaced an aging Chubby coal stove with an Englander PVD 25 this year (2014). I had a well recommended local installer install the unit and it seems to work just fine with one exception.

I am using Energex pellets and find that they do not feed evenly from the bin to the auger once the center region of the bin has become "empty". The outer edges are sitting there without sifting down to the auger.

Is this a common issue? How can I resolve this issue? The stove will stop firing in the middle of the night because the pellerts stop feeding into the firebox.

Thanks in qadvance for any input.

 

[TimfromMA]

If you coat the hopper with graphite it should help.

I also got into the habit of leveling out the pellets in the hopper whenever I walk by and topping it off just before bed.

 

[Lake Girl]

Welcome to the forum - I just tend to have a piece of doweling to help them along. I found this occurs more often when I use trebio pellets... they would leave a void in the hopper and stop feeding even when the bin appeared to be relatively full. An occasional stir with the doweling and you can see the pellets settle. I tend to prefer softwood pellets and this does not seem to happen with them. YMMV (your mileage may vary!)

Hope you have surge protection on your new stove ... We like pics

 

[Mortalis]

Thanks Tim, thanks LakeGirl
We had our electrical upgraded a couple years ago and had a whole house surge protector installed.