Am I expecting too much from my Quad 1200i Insert ?

[squeed]

I'm going into week 2 with my first pellet stove and I'm happy with it, I think.

After getting my first $400 gas bill this year, and still not being comfortable in the house, I finally decided that I would make the move to a pellet insert.

I've got the 1200i and Quad says that it will heat 2,500 sqft. I've been running it on high 24/7 and I don't believe it. I shut it down about 2 hours ago for
a cleaning, and it's fired back up again and been on high for 2 hours, and the room is only 68. The room is 10 X 10, with a peaked ceiling that opens up into
a kitchen, so it is a really open floor plan. I was not expecting it to heat the whole house, but I was expecting it to easily get to 72 or 74 in the room that it was in, and when I say "easily" I mean, within an hour of being on high, and then trickle into the rest of the house keeping it at 68.

But it's more like an electric space heater right now. I thought for sure that 2,500 sqft capacity meant that the thing would be a beast, I thought I would be
sweating in the room after it was on high for an hour.

Am I off base on this ? What could be the factors here, or is it working the way that it should ?

-S

 

[SmokeyTheBear]

I'll bet that actually what Quad says is, it will heat UP to 2,500 square feet.

Would you please tell us what the outside temperature is, the age and general construction details of your house?

What was the heat output rating of your gas system and did it have any trouble heating your house?

 

[squeed]

It is 25 degrees outside. You are correct, they say "up to 2,500" square feet. House is 15 years old, and it is a colonial. The gas
system in the house is a single zone system, Trane XE-80, I can't find where it would say what the output is, but the efficiency sticker shows
the arrow near the least efficient end of the scale.

I can say that it is generally colder near the windows in my house.

-S

 

[SmokeyTheBear]

That furnace only attains 80% AFUE and comes in two basic configurations and Outputs ranging from 31,000 BTUs/hr to 112,000 BTUs/hr.

Can you read the model number it starts with TUD or TDD depending on configuration.

What you need to understand about pellet stoves is that they have an upper limit on the amount of air they can move in any given time span and that they are hot air devices. So the air will tend to go up spread out and eventually drop down to return to the stove. They are slow steady heaters. The fact that your ceiling is peaked and opens into the kitchen basically means that the room with the stove in it includes at least the kitchen. So to heat that area (actually volume) the stove must move a good amount of air, during this time that air is loosing heat.

 

[squeed]

I looked all over the stove and I can not locate anything that looks like a model #. Where is it located ?

 

[SmokeyTheBear]

I don't know where on the unit that information is frequently there is a plate with such information inside the casing or on the what would be the back of the unit. I have a copy of the general specifications for the Trane XE-80 gas furnaces (they no longer make that line or at least don't feature it in their marketing information on www.trane.com). The only reason I asked was to get both a BTU figure and the air handling capacity. There is normally a very large difference in the amount of air that is being moved between a gas furnace and pellet stove. That relates to how fast a given volume of air can have its temperature raised (actually replaced with warmer air, etc ...) .

 

[smg64ct]

I have a cb 1200 freestanding unit. My house is a open floor plan and about 20 yrs old. I have electric heat that i do use at times but for the most part the stove does the job. My stove runs 24/7 and heats my down stairs and I have a open loft and that is warm. The bedrooms down the hall get a little cool so I use electric as needed. I do use my electric to get the house up to temp when it gets real bitter then I turn it off.