Purchased a new Mt Vernon AE

Hi everyone. I recently sold my house that had a Harman XXV (great stove) and we finally bought our second home and decided to go with a Mt. Vernon AE insert. The inlaws and my uncle had one, so figured why not.

My initial impression is that it is much quieter than the Harman XXV and throws good heat. Also, while I like the auto clean feature of the Mt Vernon (saves me from scraping clinkers), having the stove shut down in the middle of a heating cycle to clean itself just seems like an odd design to me. By the time it is done and fired back up, the house is about 2 degrees cooler. I think the XXV was a lot less fussy.

Anyway, we ended up building a fireplace for our new home and I figured i'd share.

Very NIce!

X2.... Beauty

It's a keeper.

sexy!

Sweet!

Very! Love that stove.

Now 86 those white outlets and swap in some browns. Yer feng shui is off

Nice! Great Stove

Gorgeous!

Not sure if your looking for suggestion for setting by your post, first nice set up. As for the stove I have had a Mont Vernon for over five years. There are also many post here about the setting of this stove. I would set it on Manual, 1 to 1.5 differential, flame height is up to you as I find they are all different, mine is set at minus 2. You will find the out clean is no longer a problem.

Good Luck.

Very nice...Now lets work on hiding that cord!

I have never noticed mine shutting down in mid cycle. It is an awesome unit that is for sure.

Eric

Thanks everyone. I'm still experimenting with the settings. Right now I'm using it on auto set to 71 on hardwood +1 flame height. On really cold days, the auto setting cannot attain 71, hovers at 69.5 so I'll be playing with the manual setting on those days. At this setting I can typically get 20 to 24 hrs out of a bag.

For the stove, I took the picture right after we finished the stone work and put in the stove. It's now garnished with Xmas decorations (we are slow letting go of the holidays) and the cables hidden.

I have been reading how the low burn causes the stove to run dirtier, so maybe that's my problem as auto is almost always on low.

Thanks for the heads up. I'm burning green label lignetics. This stove behaves much differently than my previous harman on auto mode. I assumed they would be similar. The harman was much more aggressive with the output and tapered down at temp, the Vernon tapers down a degree or two before the set point and is rarely aggressive with output.

I have not noticed a lazy flame but will adjust the flame height to see what if anything changes.

My Mt Vernon is just over a year old. From what I have seen, the autoclean usually occurs when the thermostat setting is satisfied and there is no longer a demand for heat. If the burn is very long, the autoclean will happen when the controls think that it is needed (would you run a dirty stove if you think it needs cleaning?). Very long burns probably means that you need to increase the flame height setting. If you find that temperature recovery takes too long after an autoclean, use a higher flame setting. The flame height setting is putting a limit on how much heat (fuel) the stove is allowed to process.
The taper down as the stove reaches the setpoint makes good sense, if the stove continued at full tilt until the thermostat was satisfied, the room temperature would overshoot due to the stored heat in the stove's cast iron. There are two different philosophies when it comes to control loops. Running full until satisfied results in temperatures averaging higher than the setpoint, tapering as you reach the setpoint results in temperatures averaging lower than the setpoint. The hysteresis is settable, I keep mine at 1.5 deg. Once you understand what the controls are doing it isn't an issue.
From what I have seen (and my experience is limited) the Mt Vernon AE makes very good use of its fuel. Even during the recent cold weather ( in the teens every night last week) it was heating the first floor of my home on less than 1.5 bags a day. My 25-PDVC on the other hand can chug down a half bag in an afternoon. That is not, perhaps, a fair comparison since the PDVC is in an unfinished basement workshop so it has a greater load.
Anyway, I absolutely love the Mt Vernon and I am sure that you will come to love yours as well.

Harvey, my burns are very long due to my use of the auto setting, which pretty much stays at low. I'm getting the impression that running on manual using a higher output is my likely course of action to reduce ash and increase avg temp and hopefully avoid midcycle shutdowns for the auto clean.

I'm not sure I understand your question, but, I ran on auto and flame height set at +4 all of last winter. I'm home most of the time, and I haven't noticed any significant dips in temperature. As I said, temperature tends to hover just below the setpoint.

You still have flame height control in auto, it's under user settings.

Sorry, manual isn't really manual. In manual mode the flame height is constant, but it still shuts down for autoclean. What really surprised me is that when I was running it on battery during the aftermath of hurricane Sandy, the air temperature reached the thermostat setpoint and it shut down for an autoclean. That meant that there was no heat until somebody noticed that it was getting cold in here.

Yes I recently learned what manual means. My assumption was that on manual with a higher heat output the stove may reach its set temp sooner and shutdown and perform its autoclean at this stage, rather than shutting down in the middle of the cycle because it cannot reach the set temp on low after say a 5 hr straight burn.

Might be, I think auto and max flame height (+5) would probably do as well. I don't really see that much difference in performance auto vs manual. I expect that in a small room manual might overshoot too much. In my house I'm heating the first floor with the stove (over 1300 sq ft) and I didn't see the difference. Some think that Manual burns cleaner, and I think that may be right. I am always suspicious of low burn causing more tars and creosote to deposit in the stove and vent.

I think your suspecion is warranted. On my harman I would get massive clinkers around the shoulder heating season and a stove nearly clean enough to eat off in the middle of February.

There is no way that the stove can not keep up unless you have it in a warehouse and burning sand.

Eric

You'll find that the mt Vernon is a real pellet miser. The auto mode is part of the reason for this. By keeping the temp below the set point, the stove runs longer and therefore more efficiently. Every time a stove shuts down, it must restart and heat back up which uses more pellets per btu of heat produced. You could equate to a smooth power transition in a car vs "jack rabbiting".If you want to have the temp warmer, just set the set point higher. It is designed to idle a couple of degrees below the set point. Nice install btw.

HAhaha...Burning sand (Hmmm, maybe that's what they make Green Supreme's out of)!!