Battle of the Big E

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kinsmanstoves

Minister of Fire
My ongoing battle with the Big E that has no heat output continues. I added a potentiometer to the combustion blower. I let the unit get up to tempo on level #2 and was getting approx 100 degrees output air from the center top heat exchanger. I started backing down the voltage and I am at approx 20% right now and I have raised the output air temp by 28 degrees. My multi meter is in the van so I do not know the voltage but I will follow up on this.

Remember kids, do not try this at home.

Eric
 

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I do believe that Jay had already mentioned that particular issue as being a large part of the problem.

Don't stop there you might want to adopt some of the things that one of the folks in the England thread have done, likely that change would help on the longevity of the blowers on device.

ETA: England thread: https://www.hearth.com/econtent/index.php/forums/viewthread/69109/

Also that B-mod, tjnamtiw, and others have been talking about here: https://www.hearth.com/econtent/index.php/forums/viewthread/70161/
 
SmokeyTheBear said:
I do believe that Jay had already mentioned that particular issue as being a large part of the problem.

Bear what do I know about these things, Just a tinkerer here. I aint no certified tech or anything. So my stuff gets overlooked. Maybe I should have told him to replace the damper plate with the hole in it for one with a much smaller hole or no hole at all. Then you can pitch the rheastat!

Someday when I have time(or grow up) I'll go get NFI certified, But I would be taking a "large" cut in pay to work on pellet burners from what I do on my present day job!
 
Yes I do recall all of this but I just have not had the time to get to it. Like I said I am playing with different things on this stove. Sorry I did not mention everyone's name.

Eric
 
Eric,

Curious to what you have for voltage? I think I got around 90 volts for a good burn on 3 with much more heat.
 
j-takeman said:
SmokeyTheBear said:
I do believe that Jay had already mentioned that particular issue as being a large part of the problem.

Bear what do I know about these things, Just a tinkerer here. I aint no certified tech or anything. So my stuff gets overlooked. Maybe I should have told him to replace the damper plate with the hole in it for one with a much smaller hole or no hole at all. Then you can pitch the rheastat!

Someday when I have time(or grow up) I'll go get NFI certified, But I would be taking a "large" cut in pay to work on pellet burners from what I do on my present day job!

Jay, I'd say that based on what I've seen you would make one first class millwright.
 
j-takeman said:
Eric,

Curious to what you have for voltage? I think I got around 90 volts for a good burn on 3 with much more heat.

90v, that low?

I will grab the meter out of the van and try to play with that on Sunday when I come in to do some paperwork.

Eric
 
kinsman stoves said:
j-takeman said:
Eric,

Curious to what you have for voltage? I think I got around 90 volts for a good burn on 3 with much more heat.

90v, that low?

I will grab the meter out of the van and try to play with that on Sunday when I come in to do some paperwork.

Eric

Depends on damper setting and what size hole is in it.

It started at 116 volts(house current) for the one I tinkered with. 90 volts with the damper that has a fairly large hole(forget the size) and out about an inch on 3 setting. Fabbed up a damper with no hole and I could use full voltage on 3 with damper out 3/4 of an inch. Still had to reduce it to 110 on 2 and 100 on 1.

This stove would run much better IMHO with a variable speed blower and no more fusing with the dang damper! One of these days will mess with a controller from another stove brand! One that can be reprogrammed. Still waiting for the warrenty to expire!
 
Going to be playing with it today.

As for the damper, any excessive sooting with the fabbed damper?

Eric
 
Only on low with speed turned down. He's been running the stove with the blower on house current for a pretty long time. Just adjusting the damper per heat setting.

I swear they forgot a baffle in this stove. Somewhere in the exhaust passage or behind the inner tin. Proving it would be mighty tough!
 
j-takeman said:
Only on low with speed turned down. He's been running the stove with the blower on house current for a pretty long time. Just adjusting the damper per heat setting.

I swear they forgot a baffle in this stove. Somewhere in the exhaust passage or behind the inner tin. Proving it would be mighty tough!

That is the same thinking I have with this stove but comparing it to other Big E's I just do not see it. There is no where near the heat as the Breckwell, P-24 I have at the house or the Heatilator running 10' from this one.


Eric
 
kinsman stoves said:
j-takeman said:
Only on low with speed turned down. He's been running the stove with the blower on house current for a pretty long time. Just adjusting the damper per heat setting.

I swear they forgot a baffle in this stove. Somewhere in the exhaust passage or behind the inner tin. Proving it would be mighty tough!

That is the same thinking I have with this stove but comparing it to other Big E's I just do not see it. There is no where near the heat as the Breckwell, P-24 I have at the house or the Heatilator running 10' from this one.


Eric

You might want to check for air flow restrictions in the convection air path as well. a few of those heat tubes not getting air would raise holy he double with the heat going into the room also.
 
I didn't like the way my Big E was burning. If I opened up the air control enough for a good vigorous burn, I'd have half burned pellets pop-corning out of the burn pot. If I shut the air down enough to keep the pellets in, I got a slow lazy flame, and not enough heat. There was no happy medium.

I've never been very good at listening, so I put a rheostat on the exhaust fan, and after some fine tuning it's a new stove. I get a nice efficient burn, the ash has gone from black to salt and pepper grey. The output temperature has jumped 40 degrees, Going from 180 to 220. My house is 2 degrees warmer using 20% less fuel per day. All with similar weather and temperatures outside. I feel like the factory exhaust fan setting is just blowing all the heat outside.

As stated above, you shouldn't modify your stove. Any and all risks for modifications are your own.
 
I didn't like the way my Big E was burning. If I opened up the air control enough for a good vigorous burn, I'd have half burned pellets pop-corning out of the burn pot. If I shut the air down enough to keep the pellets in, I got a slow lazy flame, and not enough heat. There was no happy medium.

I've never been very good at listening, so I put a rheostat on the exhaust fan, and after some fine tuning it's a new stove. I get a nice efficient burn, the ash has gone from black to salt and pepper grey. The output temperature has jumped 40 degrees, Going from 180 to 220. My house is 2 degrees warmer using 20% less fuel per day. All with similar weather and temperatures outside. I feel like the factory exhaust fan setting is just blowing all the heat outside.

As stated above, you shouldn't modify your stove. Any and all risks for modifications are your own.
Where are you measuring your heat output? 20 more degrees and 20% less fuel usage, how do I put one on my stove?
 
We played around and found that the Napoleon stove controller was a very nice fit for the bigE. We tried an Enviro universal, But the burnpot would over fill on the higher feed rates unless you used the mini setting. Mini setting didn't provide enough ump IMHO.

You can also set and forget the damper with the napoleon controller. Only issue we saw is it still over fires(over heats) on level 5 heat range just as the original controller did. We we looking into upping the convection blower CFM to 200/250. But the owner found a deal on another stove. Stove was returned to stock before trade in and he sold the controllers he had purchased on ebay.

As stated above, you shouldn't modify your stove. Any and all risks for modifications are your own!
 
We played around and found that the Napoleon stove controller was a very nice fit for the bigE.

I'm too cheap to spend $250 - $300 when I have it running so good. The way I look at it now, is it ain't broke, so I'm not gonna fix it. Now I need to go find something else to tinker with. ;-)

Where are you measuring your heat output? 20 more degrees and 20% less fuel usage, how do I put one on my stove?

Look at the first post in this thread. That mod is all I did.

As stated above, you shouldn't modify your stove. Any and all risks for modifications are your own.
 
I'm too cheap to spend $250 - $300 when I have it running so good. The way I look at it now, is it ain't broke, so I'm not gonna fix it. Now I need to go find something else to tinker with. ;-)

But you still either need to tweak the damper or fiddle with the rheostat with every different heat level/setting. Were this really shines is when using high/low mode. Just passed it on tis all. If you board heads south?
 
But you still either need to tweak the damper or fiddle with the rheostat with every different heat level/setting. Were this really shines is when using high/low mode. Just passed it on tis all. If you board heads south?

I do use hi/lo mode, and I've tuned the blower and damper for level 3. When it drops to level 1, it's good enough. When it drops to single digits or lower, I'll tune it to run best on 4, and set the convection blower to high.

Now IF my board ever went bad, I'll be shopping for a Napoleon board.
 
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