Piazzetta soot

[MtnHoser]

New Piazzetta and new to pellet stoves as well. We’ve been burning Okanagan Platinum pellets and have noticed that we have to clean almost daily, and there’s a ton of soot on the glass quickly. Our tech and some other things I read here say to run on a higher power setting but here’s where my questions start:
1. Why have lower settings?
2. On Piazzetta there is a temp setting as well, and when the probe senses that the room has reached that temp it revs the power all the way back anyway, so setting power high doesn’t seem like a fix. Are people running insanely high temps and just shutting down when it’s hot?

Our tech did install an OAK of a sort, and he tweaked it to optimize good intake too, which helped some. Happy to change pellets, but that’s not really an answer to my concerns about managing power settings. As it is, at a 4 with a really high temp it gets insanely hot in the living room. When off it gets cold quickly. Having a nice, even flow feels the best in the house, and like I said, why have lower power settings if the advice is they shouldn’t be used?

 

[Pascal_Maertens]

New Piazzetta and new to pellet stoves as well. We’ve been burning Okanagan Platinum pellets and have noticed that we have to clean almost daily, and there’s a ton of soot on the glass quickly. Our tech and some other things I read here say to run on a higher power setting but here’s where my questions start:
1. Why have lower settings?
2. On Piazzetta there is a temp setting as well, and when the probe senses that the room has reached that temp it revs the power all the way back anyway, so setting power high doesn’t seem like a fix. Are people running insanely high temps and just shutting down when it’s hot?

Our tech did install an OAK of a sort, and he tweaked it to optimize good intake too, which helped some. Happy to change pellets, but that’s not really an answer to my concerns about managing power settings. As it is, at a 4 with a really high temp it gets insanely hot in the living room. When off it gets cold quickly. Having a nice, even flow feels the best in the house, and like I said, why have lower power settings if the advice is they shouldn’t be used?

go to this info you will find you answers. if not well give me a buzz at [email protected] https://www.hearth.com/talk/threads/piazzetta-pellets-stove-a-to-z-recommendations.147362/

 

[Pascal_Maertens]

The most common problem:

Are you having an issue with accumulation of ash in the burn pot? This comes from a lack of air; you have to find where this obstruction comes from;

Time for maintenance; stove, smoke chamber, chimney, exhaust,

Mechanical issues; too many elbow, create static pressure and block the air path. Is there a grid at the end of the chimney? Some time the ash residue clogs it.



The danger of accumulation in the burn pot;

When the ash accumulate Higher than the hole of the ignitor and forms a kind of hard mat of ash ( brownie ) once this is done, and the stove is ask to start back, the new pellets falling on the formed mat of ash and are not close enough for the igniter to ignites the pellets. It will some time form a white smoke ( witch is a gas ) if the flame gets true it will ignite the formed gas and Bang! Backfire that some time looks more like an explosion with smoke coming out of the stove it can be quite scary the first time.

To prevent this issue, Piazzetta invented a brilliant self-cleaning system with no mechanical parts involved ( Cleaning Brassero )



Running on wrong power level:

Once we know all that, they are many tings that can produce this result. The common issue on is auto cleaning (cleaning brassero) this feature only comes on, on power level P3, 4 and 5. Power level P1 and P2 do not auto clean your burning pot. So never, run on P1 and P2 never.



Installed in a smaller room:

In addition, if you are running at power level P3 and more, it does not mean that the stove is running at this level! For example; if the stove is set to 20°C and is installed in a smaller room or facing a wall, the temperature ask will tend to be very easy to reach. Once the temperature is reached the stove will automatically lower it's power level to P1, it will not show P1 on the display the display will continue to show what the stove is set at ( P3 ). this way the stove will operate most of it's time on P1 and never do it's cleaning Brassero, Voila ! One ting that can be done is to extend the room temperature probe, be aware that there is a + and -

 

[Jeremy6500]

There will be more soot if you run the stove on low all the time, but if it ramps up to a higher setting and then drops back down as the room temp changes then this should take care of that issue.

Past that soot build up (also burn pot overflow and incomplete pellet burn) is due to lack of air flow 99.9% of the time. this could be an obstruction from the air intake, too many elbows or the wrong size exhaust for the length of the run, or a dirty stove. How long have you been running it? First step would clean it spotless. Not just the burn area, but the exhaust venting as well. The best way I have found to do this is to use a leaf blower at the end of the exhaust to suck all the ash out. If you do a search you will find details about how to do it.

Bad pellets can cause a bad burn issue (I have experienced it), but my guess is that it is an air flow issue.

Does your stove have an adjustable damper or anything to control the air flow? Does it have a way to adjust the exhaust fan?

 

[MtnHoser]

Great answers. After some more time I can say that while Okanagan pellets burn great in my P158 T, they do not burn well in my Sahara. Burning Cubex exclusively in the Sahara I get a clean, efficient burn with no soot.

The Okanagan also leave behind the brownies that Pascal mentioned, but the Cubex don’t. I wish I could figure out a way to burn the Okies in the Sahara as it is the main house heater, and I have a lot of Okies I ordered. Regardless, I’ll be burning only Cubex as soon as I’m out of Okies.

What I do is set the stove to the desired temp and power level 4. Once it reaches desired temp it does indeed rev back to 1. All well and good, but some days it never revs up because even at 1 it is maintaining temp just fine. With Cubex even this isn’t even a problem. With Okies in the Sahara no matter the power it gets sooty and fast. In the 158 the only time the flame acts off is if I haven’t cleaned in over 2 days and the cakey brownie is building up in the burn pot.