Jacki1969 said:
can anyone please tell me if I need to worry about any gases from my pellet stove if the power goes out?
If you have a fire cup full of burning pellets when the power goes out, your pellet stove will stop opperating.
What this means is :
No combustion fan motor running to exhaust the smoke from the burning pellets out the 3 inch flue. Pellet stoves use fan forced exhaust & no power =no fan forced exhaust & maybe no exhaust at all.
The inside of the pellet stove will fill up with smoke & sufficate the fire. Smoke will come out of the door gasket and into the room with that wonderfull camp fire odor permeating the room.
Now would be a good time to open a window, I think & maybe an outside door too.
No auger pellet feed motor to feed in new pellets to burn, so your fire will starve for fuel if the fire does not previously sufficate itself in its own smoke.
And of course , the room air circulator will also stop running.
I don't know if you need to worry. That depends on what kind of person you are.
I didn't worry becuase it wasn't be the first time I smoked out the house & had to open all the windows & doors for 15 or 20 minutes until the stench cleared out.
THIS IS THE REASON WHY THEY TELL YOU NOT TO INSTALL A PELLET STOVE IN A BED ROOM.
If I were sleeping in the same room as the stove, i could wake up dead from trying to breath smoke.
actually , I would not wake up at all if I were dead,
but you should know what i mean.
Some people buy battery back ups for their pellet stoves. a 12 volt dc battery & a 12 vdc to 120 volt ac inverter rated above the current consumption of the pellet stove. This will give you the power to properly shut down the pellet stove without smoking out the room.
This is important if you have a wife or are a wife.
Me , my living room, where the pellet stove is located, looks like my garage & my garage looks better than my living room because of kick ass car in it!
so whats a little smoke from the pellet stove matter amoung the junk pile of assorted engine parts in the living room ?
On the other foot, if you got a $360,000.oo grand ballroom for a living room, with mirrors on every wall and grand chandaleriers and whot not, then, I would worry,too.
Some people have kick ass houses and piles of crap for a car. I have a kick ass car & a pile of crap for a house.
Well, if my car had been built in 1910 ,instead of 2004, I guess it would have a right to be a pile of crap like my 1910 house has.
From this we learn that everything is relative; which is the lesson for today.
After proof reading, it occured to me , 2 other solutions to the problem of power outage & pellet stoves.
Computer geeks rave about a UPS, this is not united parcel service but rather an uninterupted power supply & is probably the only seamless solution to the problem; however, you need to get a ups with an inverter of more output that your pellet stove requires. Expext up to 30 minutes of run time from a ups & to have to buy new batteries every 4 years, if ni cad or every 8 years if lithium.
another answer is the $140.oo 2 hp 2 cycle 500watt @120vac generator from
www.harborfreight.com
It wont stop the pellet stove from filling up with smoke but will allow you to restart the pellet stove and run it for another 8 hours or until the generator eats up all its gasoline, whichever occurs first.
The generator must be outside the house (stinky carbon MONOXIDE EXHAUST) & run an extension cord only to the pellet stove. (NO HOOK UP TO THE HOUSE FUSE BOX ALLOWED without a power line feed back disconnect switch).
This is a really small & really cheap generator only good for the pellet stove & a couple of cfl
light bulbs , at most. cpf=compact flouresent light bulb---9 watts consumption = 40 watts of light
so the gen will give you heat & light & what more do you want during a power outage???
You want more, buy a bigger generator so you can run a tv & a ref & a dish washer & a micro wave, but not all at the same time, but rather, one at a time.
For this, expect to spend $500.oo to $800.oo for a 4000watt 5 to 6.5 HP generator & expect it to be too heavy for 1"normal" person to move (does not include arnould swartznigger, he can move it, all by himself) .
So, a lot 2 learn & please read the owners manuel if you buy a generator because too many do not do's to mention.