Andrew Churchill said:
My PB105 is very reliable as long as it is in the manual mode and in the winter the manual mode is just as efficient as the auto ignite mode.
I shut the PB down once a month and scrape the burn pot. Other than that I just fill the hopper once a day and pull the heat exchanger tube scrapers a couple of times a week.
Since I fired the boiler up in mid October it hasn't shut down on me once and I've only spent about an hour total on maintenance so far this season.
Andrew
It's good to know that such low maintenance is possible. Unfortunately, my experience with the PB105 has been utterly different. Although I keep suggesting to the dealer that there is a lingering factory defect with the boiler, he insists that it is OK, and the sole issue is finding the proper setting for the feed rate.
Last winter, the first season, was pretty much a total loss. The boiler would not auto-ignite, and if it was manually lit, it would put out unbearable smoke & odor. After the dealer exhausted every trick he knew, finally a factory service person showed up in the spring, and got it to ignite on its own, although there didn't appear to be any one thing that he found to account for the problem. At that point, I began to have enough confidence to go ahead & install the 1500 lb aux. hopper (which actually I think is fairly priced, contrary to an earlier posters comment).
Come this season, things looked pretty promising in the fall & early part of the winter, which was uncommonly warm. But since the cold really arrived, the aggravation has been constant. To his credit, the dealer has been by a couple of times to check it out, but he insists that all is OK with the boiler and the installation, and his only suggestion now is to keep turning the feed rate down. I was counting on only weekly attention to the boiler, as it is located at my elderly mother-in-law's house, and I am there just once a week to look after the needs of the place - and the dealer had assured me that all that would be required would be to fill up the bulk hopper and give a couple of pulls on the water tube scrapers. He claimed that scraping the burnpot wouldn't be required more than once or twice a season.
Well, what has happened is that in about 5 days of running unattended, carbon deposits build up in the burnpot, flyash accumulates on the water tubes, partially burnt pellets appear in the ashpan, visible smoke comes out the exhaust, and then a 3 blink error message. Initially the feed rate was set at 6 at the recommendation of the dealer, then 5, 4, and now 3. Lowering the feedrate does seem to be reducing the problem, but also of course the heat output. At the present point, I am trying weekly operation of the tube scrapers, weekly opening of the hopper on the boiler to thoroughly scrape the burnpot, biweekly vacuuming of the firebox, and monthly sweeping of the exhaust pipe. Messy & time consuming - and not even sure yet of whether that will do it.
It may be that we are just asking more of the boiler that it is capable of delivering, but the dealer has continued to claim that it should be able to do the job, and at the same time deny that there might be any manufacturing defect lingering. Yes it was a difficult path for the exhaust, the length of which is at the limit of what the manual says is acceptable, but the dealer has repeatedly measured the draft and says that it is within spec, if not ideal. Yes, it is a large heating load, and we need to be burning at a rate of something like 12 tons a season, but the dealer says he has other customers who are doing that without difficulty. Burning Northern and New England hardwood pellets up to this point, thinking of trying softwood next time.
Have any thoughts? Could the frequency of pulling the tube scrapers possible be the critical factor? I don't think that auto/manual ignition is relevant, since the load is such that the fire never goes out, but maybe? Why do you mention manual ignition as being significant?
Steve
