A good pellet stove .....

[muss]

in my opinion should be able to burn any & all pellet brands . They<engineers> should be build with simplicity for user friendliness & effective burning with minimal tinkering. I have deduced that after burning so many bags, things have to be tinkered with such as air,etc. It seems to be just common sense that upkeep of stove cleaning is highly important . I know i'm having my share of problems & they are not related to my chitty pellets . I got to this by reading all the posts & my experience with my stove . Back in March & April ,i burned 3 brands of pellets with no problem , then pre-bought the Athens & started seeing a difference . But i know now that the problems i'm having as we speak has nothing to do with the pellets . Maybe i'm wrong but putting all the posts together about pellets & their "bad" burning , my conclusion is the pellet stoves themselves. They,the stoves, should get hot enough to burn all . My 2cents. Muss

 

[krooser]

I'm on the other end of the spectrum... I haven't "adjusted" anything on my stove since I installed it over one year ago... nothing.

My stove service guy came out last Feb(?) because I had a lazy flame. He cleaned my stove using his leaf blower and all has been well since then. He cautioned NOT to fiddle with the fresh air damper no matter what pellets I was buying... he said I'd just get better results leaving it alone... which I have done.

I've used several different brands of pellets, too. Marth (hard and soft), Ultra's, Pro Pellet, Uncle Jed's and another who's name escapes me. Different heat output, different amounts of fines, etc. but I've never touched anything.

After seeing how nice my stove runs after a good cleaning I know he's correct.

 

[Souzafone]

I'm more like Krooser on this. The only thing is I do all the maintenance myself and the owners manual doesn't mention a few maintenance items that need to get done, and there is no service manual. That's why this site is great. My stove will burn any pellet, but there is a cost in maintenance. A few years ago pellets were hard to get, and I underestimated our need, so we bought non-premium pellets off e-bay that looked like they were mostly bark. The stove burned them and we kept warm, but I had to clean a lot more frequently than I had gotten used to. I see a lot of people here complaining about box store pellets containing a lot of fines, and having to sift their pellets. Use premium fuel that isn't overly handled or stored incorrectly and you shouldn't have to mess with any settings other than temperature.

 

[imacman]

in my opinion should be able to burn any & all pellet brands .........

I agree....IMO, a pellet is a pellet is a pellet. All I have done with the 3 different brands I've tried is to vary the air damper setting so the flame is active, but not so much that burning pellets are jumping out of the burn pot.....that's it!

 

[hossthehermit]

Looking back on my years burning wood, kinda like saying "If I can get dead fir for $20/ cord, my stove should burn it as well as it burns the $200/ cord oak the other guy sells". If you don't like one kind, don't buy them again. But that's just my opinion.

 

[itworks]

A Good Pellet Stove : Harman P68
A Miserable Company: Harman Stoves
A Good Dealer : Priceless