Harman PB105 Owners

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Chris04626

Minister of Fire
What is your cleaning schedule you follow? On the hopper there is a recommended schedule do you follow that?

Just waiting to get mine hooked up. Do you shut it down before cleanings? Any tips?
 
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In between cleaning, I pull all 3 heat exchanger cleaning rods a few times every time I put pellets in.

I shut mine down before cleaning by turning the low temp setting all the way to Off then coming back a while later when the fan has stopped. Then I swing the burner open, pull the ash pan out, and set the pan under the burn pot. Then I use the little scraper it came with to scrape the bottom and sides of the burn pot. It will have the "Harman Speed Bump". I little lump of carbon built up towards the bottom of the burn surface. Just above the burn pot mine has a fire brick piece to deflect heat. Be careful not to hit it or scrap it with the scraping tool.
Then I loosen the 2 thumb screws under the burn pot and take off the cover for the ignitor. I thump the sides of the pot with the scraper to knock any ash out of the ignitor and carefully scrape the ash out of the chamber - don't damage or pull the ignitor wires.

For me, that's the most important part. Keeping the ignitor clean. If I let it get really bad, the ignitor won't work correctly and you can get a backfire when the pellets take a long time to light. Then when it does light, it will touch off with a big Boom and blow smoke back out the air intake.

During the summer, while I'm just providing domestic hot water, I clean it about once per month and dump the ashes out every 3 months (about twice from spring to fall). During the winter I clean it every 2 weeks. In the coldest part of winter I clean it every week. I dump the ash out after each ton of pellets.

About twice per year I take the leaf blower to it and thump on the exhaust pipes. I have a 4" brush and I really should find a way to brush it out soon. I haven't been able to get the T's apart without destroying them so I'll need to buy some new ones and just wreck these.

I also bought a small stove brush with a long flexible metal handle to brush down the heat exchange tubes a little better. I do that a couple times a year.

Once per year I pull off the combustion fan and check the blades. Haven't found any problems yet so I brush it off and put it back in.

I'd be interested to know if anyone has oiled their fan motor and what they used.

There's also a small cover next to the fan that I remove once per year and clean out the really fine powdery ash that collects in there.

Oh, there's also a fines trap that people say should be checked. It's under the hopper on the opposite side from the control panel.
 
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how do you have yours installed, do you have a separate thermostat for it?
Mine uses the same thermostat that my oil boiler uses. I just turn off the switch for the oil boiler. If I go on vacation, I turn the oil boiler back on and turn the switch off to my pellet boiler.
 
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Thats how i am having mine done.

They started installation today. I noticed one of the rods when you pull it something rattles a little bit what could that be? Also one of them is a little tough to pull out.
 
The far right rod on mine rattles too. I think it's a small chain that dangles down to rub the surfaces below it. I usually work that one a little more vigorously to get that chain rattling.
The only one that pulls hard on mine is the one right over the burn pot when it's really cranking out the heat. When it's off or not blasting hard they pull out easily.
If it pulls hard now when it's cold, it might be too tight on the heat exchanger or the fitting in the sidewall may be too tight.
 
You might want the get the dealer to check that out. You'll have this boiler a long time so you'll want it working well. Maybe they'll recommend trying it after the first fire to see if the heat loosens it up? I don't know. But if you let them know now when it's new you'll have it on record in case it gets even worse later on.
When you say "pulls hard" do you mean hard enough so it takes 2 hands to pull it out? Sometimes mine will drag a little but mine's not new anymore so it has ash on the heat exchanger. If I get it really hot, the left one sometimes won't come out all the way but never the far right one.
I guess on the positive side that means it's scraping really tightly on the water pipes and getting them really clean.
 
Well im not sure, IS something different needed to heat the hot water? I have basebord heating so i assumed the water is being heated
A few ways to meet the needs for DHW using the pellet boiler to produce DHW, purchase and install the DHW coil in the pellet boiler or use a circulator between both boilers keeping both boilers hot in order to obtain DHW from the oil boiler coil or purchase a Superstor which would be piped as a zone for DHW.
 
i dont know a whole lot about it, i know i dont have the coil, I know he did install an expansion tank. From what he has told me, he is hooking it up so if for some reason the pelelt boiler shuts off, out of pellets or error or something then the oil boiler will automatically come on.

Any of you have pics of your instal?
 
I've burn hardwood and soft/hard blend and they seemed to burn the same. I clean the burnpot on Saturday mornings and it takes only about fifteen minutes to open the swing out. clean the pot and vacuum it out, scrape the boiler walls a little with a putty knife and here I only see grey ash buildup maybe one eighth of an inch thick. I might check the ignitor compartment a couple of times a season, but found little in there. Checked the combustion fan once last winter and it wasn't coated at all, replaced it with no other effort. I dump the ash pan once a month after burning about a ton per month and that's it. Easy. There is a little carbon build-up in the burnpot each week but a couple of vigorous scrapes with the Harman tool takes care of those. Done and easy.
 
I've been out for the weekend. But about the DHW, I have a boiler-mate for my DHW. My oil boiler used to provide the heat for my DHW but with the pellet boiler connected directly to the oil boiler it now does the same thing. The boiler-mate can't tell the difference. When it calls for heat it activates the circulator on the pellet boiler (just like if the thermostat upstairs had called for heat) and the pellet boiler takes care of keeping the water at the correct temperature. During the summer I have the pellet boiler temperature settings turned down. The high setting is on 175 and the low on 145.

If you currently have electric DHW, then you'd have another investment to make. If you currently have a boiler-mate and are using your oil boiler for hot water, you don't have to do anything.
 
He has it the same as yours water temp at its lowest. e has the feed rate at 4 is that where it should be this time of year?

Also te rod thats the hardest to pull out is the bottom one. Now that its running its even harder to pull out, i suppose i should call the dealer and see what they think
 
It seems to be using very little pellets for hot water, but today for soem reason with the thermostate turned down low, the boiler is running and we have heat coming from baseboards, Any idea why this would be?
 
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