Quadra-Fire Castile Pellet Stove-Majority of Heat Blowing Out Exhaust

[ruraldogs]

Hi All:

We are relative newbies with regard to pellet stove use. I checked the starter links prior to posting. We have purchased a used, Quadra-Fire Castile Pellet Stove from a relative. Original ownership of the stove involved professional installation, cleaning and maintenance for a few years, followed by secondary ownership, home installation and NO cleaning or maintenance for one year, followed by storage. We are the 3rd owners of this stove. We pulled the manual up online and cleaned the stove according to instruction. The problem we are having is that excess heat and hot embers are blowing out the exhaust pipe (out the wall installation - no vertical) and little heat - barely lukewarm - is coming out of the front of the unit. One issue we have noted is that the bottom window gasket is missing. While this is something we are getting replaced, it hardly seems like it will resolve the primary issue we are experiencing with this stove.

I have not been able to find information specifically addressing this issue on Google or any of the forums. Help?

 

[imacman]

Are you sure there is supposed to be a gasket on the bottom of the window? Many stoves have parts of the gasket missing to provide an air wash to keep the glass cleaner.

 

[imacman]

BTW, welcome to the forum.

 

[ruraldogs]

Thank you, imacman! No, we're not sure about the gasket, to be honest. We made an assumption about it based on the myriad videos we watched on YouTube with regard to pellet stove maintenance (in general - not our model). I'll take a look at the manual.

 

[SmokeyTheBear]

You have a straight horizontal vent sounds like something needs to be done to slow that air flow in the exhaust system down. I don't believe the Castile has a damper.

First the controller in the unit flashes a blue led when it first sees power, could you tell us what it flashing. It blinks a certain number of times. stops, then repeats. Somewhere on the site here there is a list of what those mean.

The controller also has a dial on it with numbers and a slot with an arrow pointing to a number. Two of the numbers are valid for your model the rest aren't. There is a posting that has that information on here as well maybe a bit later I'll see if I can locate the information.

If DexterDay or another of the Quad burners pops in they probably have that information at their fingertips.

Please tell us what you have for a termination cap on the vent.

Have you adjusted the flame height for high burn as described in the manual?

Has your heat exchanger been really cleaned and how many of the aluminum units are missing (this affects the stoves ability to remove heat from the combustion air stream if too many are missing, speeds up the air flow).