Earth stove model MP35-50 problem

[DaveOHUSA]

A neighbor has an a Earth stove model MP35-50 pellet burner. She can not find anyone in Cincinnati that will even look at it. Seems they just want to sell her a new stove.... makes me mad they refuse to even look at it... Anyway, since I am pretty handy, I am trying to help her out. She has had it for 20+ years and it has always worked great. When she tried to fire it up this season, the smoke wouldn't leave the firebox and started coming into the house thru any little gap it could find. We checked and cleaned the flue and there was really no build up at all...

The unit has 2 fans. The combustion fan comes on and seems to work fine. The room air fan does not come on. I am unfamiliar with the normal operation and why I am here. Does the unit have to "get up to temp" before the room fan will kick on? Or is there a good way to test the motor? Do these stoves have a thermocouple that might cause an issue? I am assuming since she has had it so long and this has never happened before, that she is familiar and followed the correct startup procedure.

I did notice a couple peculiarities... the manual shows in both the schematic and the pic of the rear of the stove that the unit has 2 manual reset buttons. I can only find one and I looked everywhere!!... The one for the room air fan is not on the unit... and when I powered it on it seemed like sometimes the switches worked and sometimes they didn't... I looked at the circuit board and there were no obvious scorches... But it seemed like if the room air fan motor had a short in it, it may cause this intermittent switch activity. It acts like a broken or loose wire but seems hard to imagine since she only uses it a handful of times a year. I checked the fuse and it looked fine and when I took it out the unit would not power on but with it installed the unit powered on... So appears the fuse is fine....

Any suggestions on trouble shooting approaches are greatly appreciated.

 

[heat seeker]

I maintain a Traditions Earth Stove for a friend, and maybe these two stoves are similar. They had a similar problem. Long story short, we removed the entire top of the stove to clear out the exhaust passages. One bolt on each side of the top of the stove, and the top lifted right off. It's cast, so it's heavy!

We did this in the summer, since we were able to clear out the passage by going through the vent opening that winter, and didn't know at the time that the top came off. It's now part of the annual cleaning. Just have to be very careful to get the top seated properly before installing the two bolts. They came out pretty hard the first time; I was afraid one would snap off. I now use anti-seize on the threads, and it's a breeze.

 

[DaveOHUSA]

I maintain a Traditions Earth Stove for a friend, and maybe these two stoves are similar. They had a similar problem. Long story short, we removed the entire top of the stove to clear out the exhaust passages. One bolt on each side of the top of the stove, and the top lifted right off. It's cast, so it's heavy!

We did this in the summer, since we were able to clear out the passage by going through the vent opening that winter, and didn't know at the time that the top came off. It's now part of the annual cleaning. Just have to be very careful to get the top seated properly before installing the two bolts. They came out pretty hard the first time; I was afraid one would snap off. I now use anti-seize on the threads, and it's a breeze.

I read about that and removed that.. Wasn't much build up but still no luck... I appreciate the information

 

[Igo_Bill]

I just posted a similar problem and solution. Search Igo Bill post.