Good afternoon all.... We have a Cab 50 purchased in December 2012. A few days ago it shut down and never came back on; when the thermostat calls for heat it never drops pellets. Called around to the local dealer and the earliest we can get someone out to take a look is the end of next week. However, one of the shops thought it might be a problem with the vacuum or vacuum switch, based on the brief conversation we had.
We went ahead and purchased a new vacuum switch and installed it, no dice. After perusing the forums here we also tried the door trick as recommended by Eric (check door seal. latch the door and attempt to move it by grabbing the door. If it wiggles remove the nut on the back of the handle and watch for the key, it will fall out. remove the washer and place it between the cam latch and the nut. This will tighten the door and keep your negative pressure switch from tripping.) and cleaned out the thermocouple, which had a fair amount of ash, and made sure it was all the way inside the cover. The stove did come on after that, and ran through last night, shutting down once or twice and restarting as usual. It shut down this morning with a giant clinker in the ash pot (not usual for this stove and the pellets we were using) and now the same problem, no pellets dropping.
Since we have quite a wait for a tech to come out, and based on similar problems that others have had with the same stove, is it worth buying a control board and replacing it ourselves? Is this even an option? We are out of the warranty period for those components and the temps are in the single digits here at night, so we really would just like to have the stove working again.
By the way, we have burned about 85 bags of pellets since early October and have had good luck so far with this brand. The stove gets vacuumed every other day and for the most part, we have minimal ash buildup, only dumping the pan once a week or so. The stove was moved from our basement up to out first floor last summer and was thoroughly cleaned prior to starting up this season.
Thank in advance for any help.... we are by no means experts with pellet stoves and appreciate the advice.
We went ahead and purchased a new vacuum switch and installed it, no dice. After perusing the forums here we also tried the door trick as recommended by Eric (check door seal. latch the door and attempt to move it by grabbing the door. If it wiggles remove the nut on the back of the handle and watch for the key, it will fall out. remove the washer and place it between the cam latch and the nut. This will tighten the door and keep your negative pressure switch from tripping.) and cleaned out the thermocouple, which had a fair amount of ash, and made sure it was all the way inside the cover. The stove did come on after that, and ran through last night, shutting down once or twice and restarting as usual. It shut down this morning with a giant clinker in the ash pot (not usual for this stove and the pellets we were using) and now the same problem, no pellets dropping.
Since we have quite a wait for a tech to come out, and based on similar problems that others have had with the same stove, is it worth buying a control board and replacing it ourselves? Is this even an option? We are out of the warranty period for those components and the temps are in the single digits here at night, so we really would just like to have the stove working again.
By the way, we have burned about 85 bags of pellets since early October and have had good luck so far with this brand. The stove gets vacuumed every other day and for the most part, we have minimal ash buildup, only dumping the pan once a week or so. The stove was moved from our basement up to out first floor last summer and was thoroughly cleaned prior to starting up this season.
Thank in advance for any help.... we are by no means experts with pellet stoves and appreciate the advice.
