Pellet stove - colonial house - newbie

[pennichuck]

well with oil at 2.19 a gallon here and pellets at 300 a ton id rather use my oil for 30 minutes and bring up the temp quickly then just use my pellets to maintain the temp.
trying to bring the temp up with pellets alone the cooler air from upstairs just keeps coming down into the living room and the stove really struggles to keep up. using oil brings the whole house up to 70 and the stove has a much easier time keeping 70 deg air warm rather than trying to bring 60 degree air up to 70... its really a matter of your individual house and stove ect..

 

[bungalobob]

Latest update ... results not good.

Before making major mods I thought it far simpler and less intrusive to try a couple muffin fans. I put one at the top of the doorway leaving the living room (stove room) and one at the top of the doorway leading into the family room (farthest from the stove). Sure enough, warm air pulled quickly from the living room and circulated throughout the downstairs. Unfortunately this completely overwhelmed the stove. I don't believe the specifications were mentioned before but this stove is supposed to put out 60K BTUs capable of heating a 3K sq. ft. living area using soft wood pellets. We are using soft wood pellets and only heating the 1K sq. ft. downstairs area. If I set the thermostat to 70 degrees the stove never shuts off and even the living room (stove room) won't reach the set temperature (70). I have either been totally mislead by specifications or there is something seriously wrong with this stove.

We aren't super insulated but are certainly somewhere near average as far as walls and windows are concerned. For reference our forced hot water boiler takes about an hour to bring the house from 60 degrees to 70 in the winter and 20K BTUs of air conditioning cools this same area from 80 degrees to 70 in about the same amount of time. The stove runs for 4-5 hours and can't raise the house temperature even 1 degree. Very frustrating ....

Can't help but chime in here. I have the Harman P68 which the brochure states is rated at 68,000 BTU's and roughly 2200 sq ft. I have a two story home with the stove downstairs and not pointing directly at stairs. I maintain 73/74 downstairs, and the farthest point upstairs reaches 68/69. I have one small fan at top of stairs blowing down. I have no problem maintaining these temperatures. It is in room temp mode and when it reaches 74 degrees or so, it goes to low fire mode. It never just keeps on burning like mad, as does yours. It's either the layout of your home, or possibly the distribution blower on your stove. To be rated at 60K and for 3000 sq ft, you should be getting a heck of a lot of heat being moved around your home and not in just one room. Since you had installed, I would get hold of the dealer and see what they can do for you. That heat has to be going somewhere.

 

[sweetsncheese]

Thanks again for the responses.

I've done more reading in this forum and spoke to the dealer who was quite helpful.

I learned two key points:

- Pellet stoves don't lie. If you're burning bags of pellets, you're generating BTUs. The more pellets, the more BTUs. That's a fact that can't be altered. So, I needed to find a way to feed the stove more pellets.

- The Manual/Automatic modes do not affect programing or thermostat settings. Rather "automatic" controls the heat output setting (pellet feed rate) of the stove between 1 and 5. I set it to "manual" and "5" and now I get full heat output whenever the thermostat calls for heat based on the daily program of temperatures I set. I thought I needed the "automatic" setting to do this and I was mistaken.

Setting the stove to "manual" and "5" has brought the heat in my house up enough to actually cycle the stove on and off when set at 70 degrees. I'm not sure I could get it much higher than that, but that's close enough to work with. I still need to fiddle with air circulation and I have a feeling I am leaking too much heat upstairs but these are things I can experiment with and learn more about over time. The major hurtle has been cleared. I can heat most of my lower level to at least 68 degrees without oil.

Thanks everyone!

 

[Racerx009]

Latest update ... results not good.

Before making major mods I thought it far simpler and less intrusive to try a couple muffin fans. I put one at the top of the doorway leaving the living room (stove room) and one at the top of the doorway leading into the family room (farthest from the stove). Sure enough, warm air pulled quickly from the living room and circulated throughout the downstairs. Unfortunately this completely overwhelmed the stove. I don't believe the specifications were mentioned before but this stove is supposed to put out 60K BTUs capable of heating a 3K sq. ft. living area using soft wood pellets. We are using soft wood pellets and only heating the 1K sq. ft. downstairs area. If I set the thermostat to 70 degrees the stove never shuts off and even the living room (stove room) won't reach the set temperature (70). I have either been totally mislead by specifications or there is something seriously wrong with this stove.

We aren't super insulated but are certainly somewhere near average as far as walls and windows are concerned. For reference our forced hot water boiler takes about an hour to bring the house from 60 degrees to 70 in the winter and 20K BTUs of air conditioning cools this same area from 80 degrees to 70 in about the same amount of time. The stove runs for 4-5 hours and can't raise the house temperature even 1 degree. Very frustrating ....

I have a thermometer by the air ducts of stove and it say its blowing out 310 degrees you can use and oven meter to cheak heat output I played with my stove between brand of pellets and air and exhaust adjustments. My stove is burn at max. but the fans and the cool mist makes the difference.

Good luck