Questions about Englander 25-pdvc pellet stove

[stan]

hi there, im new to the forum and new to pellet stoves. I purchased my englander on craigslist for 800 with all vent pipe and a ton of Lignetics premium pellets. Ive only run it about 2 weeks now, it seems to really help with keeping our house warm. I have it vented out my basement and also have the outside air pipe hooked up. It gets plenty of air and the fire seems to burn great most of the time. i have also cleaned it almost every day since we have had it, with a good vacuum cleaning and dissasembly every saturday. The only problems im having are occasionly it burns out. When it does, it the hopper is still full sometimes, and the glass gets real black. the settings on the back are always set at heat 5 and blower 5. And the bottome settings are at 4-3-1. Should my control settings be set any different? im afraid to change the settings around because they say not to adjust them from factory settings. Any suggestions would be great.

thanks
stan

 

[SmokeyTheBear]

Welcome to the forum stanpelletstove.

I don't have the same stove you have however I will ask some questions that I'm certain that others with that stove are going to want answered.

How old is the stove?
Describe your venting.
Exactly how did you clean the stove?

 

[imacman]

I believe the factory settings for the bottom buttons for that stove are 4-6-1.

The fire going out w/ pellets still in the burnpot sounds like not enough burn air....and the real black window seems to indicate the same thing.

When you bought it, did you try to clean as many places that you could on the stove? Do you have the owners manual and CD?

 

[stan]

the stove is about 6 months old, the couple i bought it from needed money and sold many things including this. Just about once a day i remove ash and un-burned pellets from the burn pot. Seems to build up there very fast. Once a week i have been shutting it down and letting it cool for about and hour or so, or until cool to the touch. Ill remove the burn pot, and baffel behind the burn pot, and shop vac everything out. Then scrape down everything in the stove with a puddy knife and wire brush everything in the burn pot, and then vac again. i also reverse my shop vac to blow and blow out my vent pipe for about one minute.

I have about 5 feet underground in my basement, 4 foot of vent pipe up, 90 degree bend out a steel framework i installed in a window slot in my basement. i have it so it looks kind of like a dryer vent. about 1 foot above that, and about a foot and a half to the right i have my outside air hooked up. "i have a boiler heater too, and when it kicked on it would choke out my pellet stove for air, when i installed the direct air hook up it didnt have a problem with my boiler kicked on."

would it be safe to adjust my settings from 4-3-1 to 4-6-1? it seems like it doesnt fully burn up my pellets, like it feeds more pellets than it can burn? im still very new to this, and plan on purchasing a better name brand pellet stove in the years to come. I really like this source of heat, living in a town it exhaust very little if any smoke, and doesnt bother neighbors.

thanks again for help

stan

 

[SmokeyTheBear]

You have a basement install, so your OAK should be 3" and I don't know how critical it is but my understanding is it should be lower than the exhaust. You might want to check that with Englander technical support.

Do you know how many pellets the other folks put through the stove?

 

[SmokeyTheBear]

The adjustment to the lower rate burn actually increases the amount of burn air pulled through the system when in low burn. It is safe to set the stove to its factory default setting.

 

[stan]

i have no way of knowing how much they burned in it. Im guessing about a half ton, give or take. I know they only used lignetics premium wood pellets as i am using them now. I dont have it it vented 3' above ground, without taking an actual measurement i would say closer to 2'. seems to vent fine though, we have multiple smoke dectectors and carbon sensors in the house, all tested but never went off.

as for the settings, do you know if 4-6-1 is the factory settings on it. i have the manual but it doesnt say. Does anyone else have one of these that can check what their settings are at?

My research shows that theses settings kind of change the fuel air ratio, i work on motorcycles so i understand the importance of proper fuel air ratios for proper combustion. The black on my window of the stove makes me think its running rich? too much fuel "pellets" and not enough air.

while i have you guys helping......is it ok to open the door to the stove to scoop out some unburned pellets and ash on the burn pot while its running "just for a few seconds"? and its it ok to re-fuel "add pellets" with it running. My manual says no, but ive read on here that people do it?

thanks, this site and everyone has been more than helpful

 

[SmokeyTheBear]

If macman says it is 4-6-1 then I'm fairy sure that is it. There are others here that can chime in on the matter. You can also verify that with Englander. I said nothing about 3' vent height, I said a 3" (inch) OAK is required for a basement install and I believe that the OAK must terminate below the vent termination, you should verify this with Englander as well.

The reason I asked how many pellets had gone through the stove was to see if other things needed checking and cleaning (BTW annual = one ton as near as I can figure and a lot of manuals concur).

The first number is fuel, the second is air, the third says turn the fan on when temp is reached 1 or keep it off 0, 0 is for testing only, only use when instructed by an Englander tech.

 

[imacman]

Set the stove to 4-6-1 and try it. Raising the second button (LBA) from 3 to 6 will increase air through the burn pot, "leaning out" the a/f ratio, and burning the pellets a little faster. I think this should solve the unburned pellet problem.

Another way to make sure about the factory settings would be to do a control board hard reset.....it puts everything back to what the factory set it at.

If you want to try that, PM me for the procedure. Also, Smokey is correct....any basement install requires a 3" OAK, per Englander manual.

 

[kscowboy]

I have called tech before and they told me the factory setting are 6-4-1 but this only effects stove when on 1and 2 my stove is about 2 years old not sure the aqe of yours

 

[SmokeyTheBear]

I have called tech before and they told me the factory setting are 6-4-1 but this only effects stove when on 1and 2 my stove is about 2 years old not sure the aqe of yours

There are also at least 4 burn programs in the controller, what gets used for what is likely controlled by the selected burn program. The proper place to get detailed information is directly from Englander.

However the default for that stove is 4-6-1 and returning it to its default setup is perfectly safe.

Also I believe that while running the room air at the same setting as the feed rate is allowed it is better to run it a bit higher from a heat extraction stand point and by heat I don't mean just a thermometer reading at the output from the blower.

Some older controllers allowed the room air setting to be set lower than it should be.

I'm sure that Mike Holton will eventually find his way here and have a few words of wisdom.

 

[stan]

thanks guys, i work 3rd shift and when i got home this morning i set the settings to 4-6-1. I also had 2" pipe running from my outside air. I had a run of 2.5" in my garage and quickly set that up temporaraly to create more air. my outside air run is alittle less than 5' total in length and so far it seems to be doing much better. it had been burning almost a whole hopper being left alone for 8 hrs! Since this morning (about 14 total hrs) it has gone through less than half a hopper full set on the same heat settings. Hopefully it stays like this, it was getting to be a hastle comming home after 3rd shift to a burned out stove and haveing to completly clean and relight it.

thanks again