A couple of MT Vernon AE Questions......

[LMPS]

Ok, I have had my MT Vernon AE for five years and have had two questions I have been meaning to ask for a long time......

1) Does anyone else experience a temperature drop of about two degrees when the stove auto cleans? I do and when it is really cold out the stove never is able to catch back up during the next cycle thus the temp. in the house just keeps on dropping. Was wondering if there is a way to rig the stove to keep the blowers on high during the auto cleaning? It still does blow hot air when it is auto cleaning but obviously not enough to keep the temperature up in the house. Any other suggestions to solve this issue? I have burned Cubex pellets and a few others and this happens no matter the pellet or the setup on the stove so I do not believe its a pellet issue or a set up issue. It happens if I burn in Hardwood, Softwood or Sunflower. And I ask this realizing it could just be my house and its ability to hold the heat. The house is only twelve years old.

2) Has anyone noticed the ash on the right side of the baffle is blacker than the left? When I clean the stove I have always noticed on the front of the baffle the right side gets a black sticker ash and on the left if there is any ash it is gray, normal ash. And when I take the baffle off the same thing is true on the heat exchanger. I have noticed this no matter what kind of pellet I burn or what the set up of the stove is. And yes I clean the stove twice a week, have cleaned the exhaust blower and have it professionally cleaned yearly. Was wondering if it might be because of the exhaust blower is on that side of the stove so it does not allow the ash on that side to completely burn? Just a guess.

Thanks

 

[JoeS]

1) Yes, I experience the same temp drop and do not know of anyway around it. I am burning softwoods and could probably go most of the day without an autoclean but unless someone knows something I don't there is no way around it.

2) Yes, the right side of the stove is in fact always dirtier than the left. Even the flame seems to want to pull to the right. No idea why.

 

[john193]

1 yes I'm noticing this too. I just got this stove 4 months ago. It only struggles to get back up to temp on auto. I haven't yet tried switching it to manual because the day temps here have been in the low 50s all week.

2 I haven't noticed the baffle as much but the right side of the glass does get dirtier.

I'm enjoying the stove, but I think the auto clean feature should have been programmed differently. I used to own a harman xxv and that thing would run like a happy dog with clinkers the size of dollar coins.

 

[LMPS]

1 yes I'm noticing this too. I just got this stove 4 months ago. It only struggles to get back up to temp on auto. I haven't yet tried switching it to manual because the day temps here have been in the low 50s all week.

2 I haven't noticed the baffle as much but the right side of the glass does get dirtier.

I'm enjoying the stove, but I think the auto clean feature should have been programmed differently. I used to own a harman xxv and that thing would run like a happy dog with clinkers the size of dollar coins.

1) I run my in manual and there is no difference.
2) Yes I have noticed this also.

Agree, it should have been programmed different. I wonder if there is away to hack into this and reprogram it? There must be something that tells the convection blower when to be on high or low, if we could trick it then maybe we could get the blower to stay on a higher setting longer during shut down. Oldmtvernon's suggestion is interesting, which would get the blowers going quicker during restart, either way the issue is that it does not produce enough heat while it is shutting down and restarting during the auto cleaning.
One thing I have done when I know its going to be cold out is to try to get the house as hot as the day before so that when it turns cold I fall back to say 68 instead of 62 or 63. Does not work all that great when its cold for an extended period of time.

 

[kinsmanstoves]

Maybe I am not home enough but I can not recall ever seeing my stove shutdown to do an autoclean. As for the 2 degree temp drop, no again. On New Years day I did notice the frontroom a little chilly and remembered the programming it is set for 71 during the day. I went over and bumped it up three degrees and it caught up in a few minutes. I have never found the stove in a condition where it did not keep the frontroom at the temp I wanted other than when I did not clean the baffle for six months. I am not nice to my stoves. This stove does everything I ask for and makes free beer.

Joking on the beer, really guys.

Eric

 

[Harvey Schneider]

If your stove is struggling to get back up to temperature, increase the "flame height" setting under user settings. Do you have the temperature differential set at 3 degrees? That would allow the stove to wait until the temperature dropped 3 degrees before starting up again.
I wonder how your house can drop that much in the fifteen minutes it takes to do a shutdown, autoclean and restart. That stove is a powerhouse and should be able to quickly get back up to temperature. I run mine at "flame height" +3 heating over 1300 sq ft and there is only the variation allowed by the user "differential" setting of 1.5 deg.
Even with the flame height setting at +3 or +4 that stove is miserly in it's consumption of pellets. The output air on mine is running at over 200 deg and the blower is putting out 180 CFM. How can that not keep up with the heating load?

 

[Eatonpcat]

Did someone say FREE BEER??

 

[Harvey Schneider]

Did someone say FREE BEER??

Yes, but if it came from his Mt Vernon it's probably hot.

 

[serveprotect]

I agree the stove probably autocleans too often. I have my thermostat ran to a room around the corner from the stove and if it is below 25 degrees it can be difficult to keep house to temp. I have a newly remodeled farm house around 2000 sf.

 

[kinsmanstoves]

I agree the stove probably autocleans too often. I have my thermostat ran to a room around the corner from the stove and if it is below 25 degrees it can be difficult to keep house to temp. I have a newly remodeled farm house around 2000 sf.

You need to reset your "temp differential" setting.

Eric

 

[Harvey Schneider]

and if it is below 25 degrees it can be difficult to keep house to temp.

The stove is capable of keeping my house at uncomfortably high temperatures even when the outside temps are single digit. You have to learn how your stove works and adjust the settings appropriately. Read the manual.

 

[serveprotect]

Im not sure what the deal is. I know the stove and its capabilities well but i believe the location is not ideal but it is what i had to work with. Also, i have cold air returns in the same room as the stove and can feel cool air being sucked into the room. I am thinking this may be countering some heat. That air is coming from the basement which is a stone foundation which is about as tight as it can be for stone.

 

[Mr. Spock]

Im not sure what the deal is. I know the stove and its capabilities well but i believe the location is not ideal but it is what i had to work with. Also, i have cold air returns in the same room as the stove and can feel cool air being sucked into the room. I am thinking this may be countering some heat. That air is coming from the basement which is a stone foundation which is about as tight as it can be for stone.

Yup, you want to put an OAK on that if you can. The stove is sucking cold air into the house. Tightening up the house will only result in poor stove operation.

 

[Harvey Schneider]

If it cant keep up i go to Manual high output or set the stat even higher on auto.

If raising the thermostat raises the temperature the stove has enough capacity to do the job. You have to figure out how to tune your stove and/or air distribution.

 

[Harvey Schneider]

Harvey Schneider said: ↑

I still heat the second floor with oil and use oil for DHW. I was surprised at that sound of the oil delivery yesterday, even more surprised when I saw that he only delivered 60 gal. Love my Mt Vernon.​

you should state this in threads like these. when you dont, you make others go nuts scratching their heads thinking there is something wrong with their stove

The upstairs isn't included in the 1300+ sq ft that I consider the stove is heating. I know that a lot of heat is flowing up the staircase, but that just emphasizes the capacity of this stove.
Of course 3000 sq ft that OMV referred to is at the upper limit of what Quadrafire claims for the stove. Check the specs.

 

[Harvey Schneider]

still gotta say that, if i used oil heat upstairs i could run my stove on low all day you heating the upstairs stops all the cold from blasting down the stairs cooling off the first floor. its not fair to not include that it makes a huge difference when people are reading

A good point, but not completely on point. During the day the upstairs thermostat sets back to 62 and the first floor is at 70. At night the upstairs is at 65 and the downstairs is at 65. There is a brief period morning and evening when the upstairs goes up to 68. So for a good portion of the time the downstairs is warmer than the upstairs. I also feel that (no quantitative data) the upstairs heat isn't turning on as often which would indicate that heat from the stove is helping the upstairs.
Of course I am only heating about 2500 sq ft total not 3000. Still, if raising the thermostat raises the temperature the problem isn't in the stove's capacity.

 

[Bkins]

Eric,

I remember you getting a new puter for this stove. Is there any way a dealer, such as yourself, could change the autoclean settings for someone who needs it changed?

 

[LMPS]

Sorry I have not been on to reply but let me try to address everything here.

My house is a two story cape, about 1750sqft. I have had the stove five years and I think I know the stove well.
These are the current settings, I am burning PWI hardwood pellets. I have burned Cubex and the same thing happens so I do not think its the quality of the pellets I burn when its cold.

Currently the stove is set on softwood so that I get a longer run between auto cleaning. I have it set a -4 for a flame height. Someone suggested running this a +3 which I can try but the flame gets very tall on this type of setting to the point that it is reaching the top of the baffle. Is this ok? I thought the flame should only hit the middle of the baffle. The room differently is set at 2.5 I believe but that does not matter because I am calling for it to be 75 and it never reaches that when its cold so its not that it is shutting down because it reaches temperature its because it is auto cleaning.

It does have a OAK on it so that is not an issue. And yes I am trying to heat the entire house with the stove and do realize it is a big space heater so it can only do what it can. I am not complaining, the stove is great and I have cut my oil back to almost nothing. Just trying to find a way to get a little more out of the stove when it is really cold.

I do think one of the issues is the position of the thermostat it is around the corner from the stove and the stairs that up to the second floor are in between so I am losing some heat up there. But even with that said the fact still remains that the stove does not keep up when it gets down into the low tens or single digits and the reason is that it shuts down to auto clean.

 

[LMPS]

One additional item I have found with this stove is the balancing act. What is mean is at what heat output to run the stove when it gets cold. Of course you would think turn this up to High this way more heat is being put out. Well the problem with that is that if you run on High it auto cleans more frequently. This leads to problem # 1. Thus, I have always struggled with what heat out put to run. Typically, I run it on high as I need the heat output then cut it back as the house warms a little to try and get the longer run between auto cleanings.

 

[smoke show]

Seems to me your heat loss is greater than your stoves capacity.

Listen to OMV he's got his dialed in pretty good and heating a lot of sq. ft.

 

[kinsmanstoves]

Eric,

I remember you getting a new puter for this stove. Is there any way a dealer, such as yourself, could change the autoclean settings for someone who needs it changed?

As of now it only changes fuel feed settings and not auto clean.

 

[Harvey Schneider]

One additional item I have found with this stove is the balancing act. What is mean is at what heat output to run the stove when it gets cold. Of course you would think turn this up to High this way more heat is being put out. Well the problem with that is that if you run on High it auto cleans more frequently. This leads to problem # 1. Thus, I have always struggled with what heat out put to run. Typically, I run it on high as I need the heat output then cut it back as the house warms a little to try and get the longer run between auto cleanings.

If you set the flame height to a higher number it will handle the cold days better because it can burn more BTU's per hour. I does a clean based on the amount of pellets burned so, of course it will do more cleans if it is burning more pellets and they will be more often because the burn rate is higher. With the flame height turned up (I have run at +5 without any problems, scary but no problems) recovery after an auto clean will be faster. Remember that on auto the flame height setting is the max flame height setting. When the need for heat is less the stove will throttle back by itself.
My take on this is that you are starving your stove and complaining that it doesn't put out enough BTU'S.

 

[Harvey Schneider]

I would love to see some pics of your stove running on +5 also a pic of what it looks like just before you do a cleaning

Okay so here are some pics.I couldn't upload a video so I clipped some images from it. I am running on Greene Teams, the flame height +5 (max) and the stove has been running just long enough to get the convection blower up to max.






The pictures of ash are two or three days accumulation. I cleaned the window so that you could see, but it wasn't all that dirty. Mostly ash on the right upper side. Ash is light and fluffy.

 

[Harvey Schneider]

what setting you on? hardwood?

Yes, I started with utility and move to hardwood when I got the Lignetics. I continued with the hardwood setting when I got the Greene Teams.
Just some comments; I sometimes see flames nearly as large on the +3 setting, just not as consistently. On the +5 setting some of the flames disappear into the down draft section behind the plate.

 

[Harvey Schneider]

i didnt like the noise it was making either im sure its the metal dinking from the heat

Cast iron makes weird noises when it is expanding or contracting. First time I heard it was from a cast iron boiler that the tech drained quickly, while it was still hot. Loud and scary but it didn't do any harm to the boiler. I have since learned to ignore it.
I have measured (thermocouple) convection air temperatures as high as 230 on flame height +3. More typical though is around 200.