Castle Serenity pellet Stove

[1sttimehomeowner]

Good evening.

We are first time homeowners and finally got our pellet stove up and running. Our house runs on 100% Electric and tired of having 600.00 electric bills in winter. We have a 900 as. Ft house. With unfinished basement where pellet stove is. Couple questions. Already had stove shut down twice for getting hot (we went and lowered temp) figured it was our error being 1st time owners. However is there anyone that runs there stove pretty much 24/7 except when shutting down to clean it out? Also we noticed it eats pellets like crazy so if we maintain a certain temp (let's say 68 or 70) will that slow down how much pellets it eats? I am in NY if that matters

Thank you!

 

[johneh]

Welcome to the Forum.
I run 24/7 all winter. Keep the room that the stove is in at 70
Poorly insulated 600 sq. ft. summer kitchen. the pellets (1 bag)
last on average 24 hours between fill-ups. If it is really cold up to
1 1/2 bags a day (-30 to -50) So the warmer you want it the more
pellets you will use.

 

[Ssyko]

Unfinished basement will suck up a lot of your heat. I run mine 24/7 also but it is in the corner of the great room, stays 72 through the houses

 

[1sttimehomeowner]

Unfinished basement will suck up a lot of your heat. I run mine 24/7 also but it is in the corner of the great room, stays 72 through the houses

We are hoping to put sheetrock and insulation up starting in January. So for now we understand it will suck pellets but hoping it slow down as it gets better insulated. Thank you!

 

[dtaylor628]

Increase the blower fan speeds at higher outputs and make sure the exhaust fan speed is set at at least 95v on the upper two heat settings. That will usually keep the stove from overheating.

 

[bgk]

I run my serenity 24/7. The only time it’s shut down on me is when I’ve gone to top off the hopper while running two or three times. A bit strange, but other than that it’s been flawless through it’s first ton.

 

[Jake86]

I run mine 19 hours a day from 0500 to 2200 hours. Shut it down when we go to bed. Been doing this with my Castle Serenity four plus years. Three plus tons a year. I've gone through one igniter and one auger motor. Things wear out. CS on line service is great. Save fair amount of cash and stay extra warm.

 

[Talegas]

I also run it 24x7 but reading Jake's response I might try that this year (did not do it before as i was concerned about the life span of the igniter). It is just me and the wife (and the two dogs) but I use electric baseboard in the room and set it to 68F.

Related the consumption of pellets, it really has to do with the pellets themselves (assuming you stick to stall 1 on the stove). I have noticed that some brands of pellets come rather small (the pellet itself) so my serenity would feed many more pellets and will run much hotter (even at stall 1). Try to keep it running on Stall 1, and see how the temperature behaves, then as suggested by @dtaylor628 you can then increase the voltage (thus speed) of the blower fan through the settings (you'll have to shut it down..just follow the manual) to move more air.,.. or just put a good fan blowing air towards the stove or away from the stove to make it circulate in the room.

oh too many things to experiment with! welcome to the wonderful world of tweaking your stove.

PS: if you use the "thermostat mode", it will NEVER shutdown.. what it does is that once it reaches the set temperature it will go to "stall 1"..the lower setting.. and be there until it detects the temperature is too low.. then to reach the desired temperature it will go into "stall 5"...the max setting and so on. Be advised, the location of the stove thermostat might not be in the best place.. is that little bulb behind the stove like 8-12 inches below the control panel. Sort of weird place for the thermostat to be, but that is where it is. It does have a long cord (wrapped in the stove) which some of the folks have concluded that it might allow us to move it a bit further away from the stove.