Hi, I've already learned a lot about pellet stoves from this forum, but this is my first post. I bought a house last spring that had an Enviro Empress pellet stove in it. I primarily use it as a supplemental heat source. My stove seems a bit overly "quirky" to me. I will lay out some of the issues I've had, and see if folks have any suggestions.
The stove seems to suffer from two issues, from prior reading, I think they are unrelated. First, the convection blower (I hope I have the terminology right, the one I'm referring to is the room air blower) frequently surges. It works fine, and blows a lot of air, but from time to time the fan speed will surge up and down. It seems to occur more frequesntly on lower fan speeds, and when the stove is shutting down, but does occasionally do it at higher fan speeds and when the stove is in operation. I was thinking (from prior forum research) that it might be tied to the stove being dirty. Anecdotally, it seems like it is slightly better after a thorough cleaning but that might be in my head. The surging is annoying, but doesn't seem to effect the performance of the stove. I think this is a control board issue, but it's expensive, and I'm not sure how to further isolate and troubleshoot. It is sporadic, so I would think if it was a control board issue it would occur all the time??
The second issue is the stove frequently faults and shuts down. Usually it occurs when starting it up, only rarely will it shut down after coming up to speed. It sets off a trouble code light on the control panel, I believe its light number 3 which indicates a vacuum problem. Usually I can just hit the on/off button after it shuts off and it will start up and light. However, It seems to suffer from this whether its been recently cleaned or not, and the other night I made the observation that it wouldn't start at all due to pretty high winds outside. I would say that it occurs less frequently after a cleaning.
The stove is vented up through the roof, with a pretty good size pipe. The stove is not vented in from the outside, and if I have both of the sheet metal access covers in place on the rear the trouble code is much more likely to occur. This leads me to think that I need to add the vent from the outside, but I doubt that is the only problem, as even with the back covers off and a close by outside door cracked, it still experiences the fault.
Cleaning. Like I said, I only use it as supplemental heat when I am home. So maybe a total of an hour or two of run time in the evenings, and 10 or so on the weekends (total run time less than 20 hours a week). I find that I need to do a pretty thorough cleaning weekly. It it goes to two weeks, It faults much more frequently. This seems like an excessive requrement for cleanouts. If I was using it as my primary 24-7 heat source, I'd be cleaining it three times a week or more.
Thanks in advance for any suggestions.
The stove seems to suffer from two issues, from prior reading, I think they are unrelated. First, the convection blower (I hope I have the terminology right, the one I'm referring to is the room air blower) frequently surges. It works fine, and blows a lot of air, but from time to time the fan speed will surge up and down. It seems to occur more frequesntly on lower fan speeds, and when the stove is shutting down, but does occasionally do it at higher fan speeds and when the stove is in operation. I was thinking (from prior forum research) that it might be tied to the stove being dirty. Anecdotally, it seems like it is slightly better after a thorough cleaning but that might be in my head. The surging is annoying, but doesn't seem to effect the performance of the stove. I think this is a control board issue, but it's expensive, and I'm not sure how to further isolate and troubleshoot. It is sporadic, so I would think if it was a control board issue it would occur all the time??
The second issue is the stove frequently faults and shuts down. Usually it occurs when starting it up, only rarely will it shut down after coming up to speed. It sets off a trouble code light on the control panel, I believe its light number 3 which indicates a vacuum problem. Usually I can just hit the on/off button after it shuts off and it will start up and light. However, It seems to suffer from this whether its been recently cleaned or not, and the other night I made the observation that it wouldn't start at all due to pretty high winds outside. I would say that it occurs less frequently after a cleaning.
The stove is vented up through the roof, with a pretty good size pipe. The stove is not vented in from the outside, and if I have both of the sheet metal access covers in place on the rear the trouble code is much more likely to occur. This leads me to think that I need to add the vent from the outside, but I doubt that is the only problem, as even with the back covers off and a close by outside door cracked, it still experiences the fault.
Cleaning. Like I said, I only use it as supplemental heat when I am home. So maybe a total of an hour or two of run time in the evenings, and 10 or so on the weekends (total run time less than 20 hours a week). I find that I need to do a pretty thorough cleaning weekly. It it goes to two weeks, It faults much more frequently. This seems like an excessive requrement for cleanouts. If I was using it as my primary 24-7 heat source, I'd be cleaining it three times a week or more.
Thanks in advance for any suggestions.
