Harman 52i not working properly--low heat, runs dirty, excess ash

[EricHahn]

We bought a new Accentra insert, 52,000 btu, and I installed it in November 2014. We've had issues with it from day 1 and our dealer doesn't want to hear from us anymore.

Issue #1: The exhaust pipe was initially hooked up wrong. I was confused on how to hook the pipes together and called the stove store. The salesman did not give the clearest advice and it was not done properly. We got 6 blinking lights and the stove would frequently shut down. The install guy came out and showed me what I had done wrong and the stove worked great for about 24 hours.

Issue #2: The stove doesn't put out much heat. It struggles to heat our LR to 66 degrees, and forget about the rest of the house. Worse, it is blowing through 2 bags per day and we are cold!

Issue #3: It runs very dirty. We were told by the salesman and also read in the manual that one bag of pellets will produce a cup of ash. Right now, one bag of pellets completely fills the ash pan. It requires a deep cleaning every single week.

What has been done: The repair guy came out to fix the exhaust pipe, but was not happy to hear from us again when we called to say it is running cold. He came out again and cleaned it. He does not feel there is a mechanical problem. He did not do a draft test.

In fact: He doesn't see a problem at all. Both he and the owner have implied that we are expecting too much from the stove. We live in an old, drafty house with little insulation. The room where the stove is located is full of doors and windows. He said that 66 is the best a pellet stove can do, despite the fact that the thermostat is 12 feet away. In addition, he said the salesman and Harman people exaggerate when they talk about ashes and one bag filling the pan is normal. I should note that while our living room is 66, the rest of our house (2600 sq ft) is 56.

We really don't expect the stove to heat our entire home. But we do expect to feel hot air--and not lukewarm--coming from it. We do expect it to heat the room it is in and not struggle to keep it at 66 or lower.

We are feeling sick about this purchase. We had to get a (small) second job to pay for it and it is seeming like a waste of money. At this point, I can't imagine why anyone would spend 4K on a stove that doesn't heat, requires constant cleaning and emptying, sucks up the pellets, and has no one to call if it isn't working.

If anyone can advise on what would make an Accentra 52i have low heat, excess ash, and high pellet usage, we would like to hear from you. We have tried every setting imaginable, but usually run it on stove temp, (room temp doesn't work at all--won't bring it to 70 degrees or whatever we put it on), feed rate of 4.

Eric

 

[fmsm]

Have you read the sticky on how your Harman works?
What are you burning for pellets? How are they stored? Could they be defective?
Did you install an OAK? If not you may be making the problem worse by sucking in cold air from outside into your house.

What settings? Room temp/stove temp?

 

[alternativeheat]

Sorry to hear of your problems. Stove temp with feed rate 4 and the dial set to level 4 or4.5 will not heat my house either with my P61 unless it's in the 20's or high teens outside or warmer, then when it hits upper 30's it will roast you out.. I have good windows in the house and insulated doors, insulation could be better, 1800 sq ft. Room temp is another matter, same settings just flip the switch up to room temp and the whole place warms up. It uses pellets to do that though.

Lots of ash is generally related to pellet quality in a Harman, it sounds like you don't have very good pellets or I should say that you have ashy pellets.. In other brand stoves there are manual controls that could be screwed up and cause some residual burn issues. In a Harman it pretty well comes down to pellets and sometimes a very long low burn period but that won't so much produce lots and lots of extra ash, just more collection than a hotter larger fire rate. The ash first has to be present anyway in the pellets. I can get a month between cleanings in my P61 with really good quality pellets, very low ash of .2 or .3 %. Along with ashy pellets often comes lower BTU's so the stove has to eat more of them to produce equal heat of better pellets exacerbating the ash situation. Case in point: I just used a bunch or ashy pellets in my stove. A single day burning produced more ash piled up on top of burn chamber components than I have now with Douglas Fir pellets in almost a weeks worth of burning them.

Now, Room temp not putting out is usually a matter of sensor probe location. Your probe senses warm air that is not really in the room and shuts the stove down. Obviously your room doesn't have warm air, so where is the probe located that it is sensing warm air ? Also, you can't set your room temp to 69 or 70 and expect any heat to get to the rest of the house much past that room sensor probes room. Boost it up to 74 or 75 and see what happens. You state low insulation, you have a high state of cold air in the house to overcome.

That said , if your house is really that loose and that big you will have issues in the colder weather trying to heat it with one pellet stove. Might I suggest that you Consider it supplemental heat not primary heat ? Use your main heating system to bring things up to temp and the pellet stove to lengthen the between burn times of the central heat. This works, I did this with coal for more than 30 years, it drastically reduced oil consumption in my house, it cut out 3/4 of our oil heating bill in fact or delivery rate anyway.

Conclusion:
Do things that can tighten the house as best you can. Find drafts and plug them etc.
Move that room sensor probe. It sounds to me that right now it is being satisfied and so it shuts your stove down prematurely.
Maybe pick up a few bags of known good pellets and see if that changes your ash situation ( it should ).. There is info all over this site about pellet brands, research that.

 

[bogieb]

Right now, without more information, we would all just be throwing guesses in the ring and have you chasing all kinds of things. I believe your Harman should at the least be able to heat your living room, since you stated you weren't trying to heat your whole house. You say it is running cold, which is a start on a description. As fmsm stated, we would like your settings (manual/auto, room temp/stove temp, feed rate, fan setting). How does the flame look? Can you get a nice tall flame or is it always a small flame? Does the stove seem to cycle, and if so, how often?

 

[rickwai]

Sounds like a classic case of junk pellets! 1st buy a few bags of different pellets and try them. Sounds like stove is trying to heat(feeding 2 bags /day). Other thing to check would be a stuck inlet air flapper.
Bad pellets or incoming air problem.....

 

[bogieb]

Sounds like a classic case of junk pellets! .....

That may be, but even the crappiest pellets I have used haven't produced as much as the OP claims at filling the ash pan (and I have never owned a bag blazers or MWP's or any of the other pellets touted as the good stuff).

 

[md2002]

As others have said more detailed information is needed before we can give you anymore help. When I 1st bought my stove I felt the same way you did, severe buyers remorse because I didn't feel like the price I paid was worth my return on investment. The living room wasn't as hot as I thought it should be, the rest of the house was not getting warm, the stove was shutting off on low settings. Then I played around with pellets and settings and before I knew it I was very happy with the purchase. It just takes time but you will figure out what works best. The biggest thing is the pellet and a clean stove.... once I tested out some pellets I found the right combination. As most people have said, go buy some known good pellets and see what happens.

An uninsulated house and a room with all windows and doors is going to be tough to heat, no matter what you use, but the stove should keep you comfortable. It sounds like you may have been expecting too much going into the pellet stove purchase. Some people are lucky enough to heat their entire homes with a stove and that great, but when I bought my stove I knew it wouldn't heat my house and I was only getting it as a secondary source of heat and for that purpose it has served me well. To my surprise it does heat my whole house when the temps are above freezing but I have a completely sealed house, newer windows, doors and insulation.

 

[alternativeheat]

That may be, but even the crappiest pellets I have used haven't produced as much as the OP claims at filling the ash pan (and I have never owned a bag blazers or MWP's or any of the other pellets touted as the good stuff).

bogieb I filled a P61 ash pan in less than a week on some lousy pellets last year. Actually in just over 3 days. The P61 ash pan would be comparatively larger than the P52i putting the later stove in line with a day or two to fill the ash pan on the same pellets. And they were no bargain in the heat department either.

 

[EricHahn]

Sounds like a classic case of junk pellets! 1st buy a few bags of different pellets and try them. Sounds like stove is trying to heat(feeding 2 bags /day). Other thing to check would be a stuck inlet air flapper.
Bad pellets or incoming air problem.....

The pellets are 100% hardwood, premium grade, and have the pellet fuel institute seal on them. The dealer said the pellets were not the problem when he came out.

I'm pretty confident we are not expecting too much out of it and here's why: After the dealer came out, the thing ran hot and we couldn't have been more happy with it. No, it didn't heat our whole house but it was comfortable in rooms that are 25 feel from the stove, instead of a balmy 56. But it only runs like that for about a day after he's here and then it starts acting up again. Even though I take the entire thing apart and clean it each week. I did buy a brush to clean the exhaust pipe and different pellets and will see if that makes a difference this weekend.[/quote]

 

[EricHahn]

Right now, without more information, we would all just be throwing guesses in the ring and have you chasing all kinds of things. I believe your Harman should at the least be able to heat your living room, since you stated you weren't trying to heat your whole house. You say it is running cold, which is a start on a description. As fmsm stated, we would like your settings (manual/auto, room temp/stove temp, feed rate, fan setting). How does the flame look? Can you get a nice tall flame or is it always a small flame? Does the stove seem to cycle, and if so, how often?

Settings: auto, feed rate 4, stove temp, fan on medium-high. The room sensor probe is not in a cold or hot part of the room but has never come close to what we set it on, so we stopped using it. We initially set it on 75 but eventually moved it all over and it never made any difference--it heats to whatever it feels like. The flame is tall and looks good most of the time, which is why we can't figure out why it's not throwing off heat. It doesn't cycle.

By running cold, I mean we can stand in front of it and it's no hotter than an electric space heater. If I had thought this was what people meant when they carry on about Harmans, I can tell you we would have never bought one! But I did see glimpses of what it is capable of after it was worked on.

 

[bogieb]

Please give us your settings so we can offer suggestions that make sense. EDIT: sorry, your reply with the settings did not show up before I posted this, only the reply about the pellets was on my radar.

My first guess is that the probe has disconnected from the back of the stove so it is just idling, but that doesn't make sense if you are running in stove temp (which I don't know if you are or not), or if the stove is cycling and the flame gets larger/smaller. We do not at this point have enough information to give you ideas.

 

[bogieb]

bogieb I filled a P61 ash pan in less than a week on some lousy pellets last year. Actually in just over 3 days. The P61 ash pan would be comparatively larger than the P52i putting the later stove in line with a day or two to fill the ash pan on the same pellets. And they were no bargain in the heat department either.

Point taken, but I also run a stove that has a very small ash pan (the St. Croix), and believe me, there is no way I can get that many ashes out of 1 bag of pellets if it is running anywhere close to where it is supposed to be.

 

[Delta-T]

if you're running in stove temp the unit is not looking to satisfy a temperature. It is running at a fixed output...the #s 1-7.

 

[EricHahn]

I undertand that it's not looking to satisfy a certain temp, but I have to believe that it is capable of more than heating one room to 66. Otherwise, no one would buy them.

Any ideas what sorts of things cause the excess ash, if it's not the pellets?

 

[bogieb]

if you're running in stove temp the unit is not looking to satisfy a temperature. It is running at a fixed output...the #s 1-7.

As Delta is too nice to mention, I neglected to ask about the temp dial (or output dial in stove temp) in the list of info asked for. What is that set at? If it is set at 3 or below, that could be your issue.

 

[alternativeheat]

Point taken, but I also run a stove that has a very small ash pan (the St. Croix), and believe me, there is no way I can get that many ashes out of 1 bag of pellets if it is running anywhere close to where it is supposed to be.

That's good then you have at least decent pellets. And I do believe you. You need to believe me when I say there are crap pellets out there that will fill the huge ash pan in the P61 in less than a week of burning. Just because you have not burned those pellets does not mean they don't exist. And yes, they said Premium on the label and 1% ash on the label. Other , what I consider to be ashy pellets , fill the ash pan in a bit over two weeks of burning that say the same things on the label. That's how it is. Douglas Fir Pellets take over a month to fill the same ash pan. Oh my gosh, what a difference a pellet can make !

 

[md2002]

All pellets now a days say Premium grade.... that doesn't mean much anymore. What brand pellets are you burning? What's the name on the bag?

 

[EricHahn]

These are the pellets we have been using.

 

[EricHahn]

We have tried different settings on the temp dial. Yesterday, it was all the way up to 7 with the feed rate still at 4 (otherwise the hot ones are falling off) and still my 5 kids were huddling around it trying to keep warm.

 

[EricHahn]

Could bad air flow cause the stove to run so dirty? We did have the 6 blink issue early on, indicating poor combustion.

And when I say the ash pan is full after one bag, I mean it is completely full. That was what was most surprising to us when the repair guy came out last week--it ran great that first 24 hrs and there were no ashes in the pan. We are used to it starting to fill within the first 15 mins it's on.

 

[alternativeheat]

The pellets are 100% hardwood, premium grade, and have the pellet fuel institute seal on them. The dealer said the pellets were not the problem when he came out.

I'm pretty confident we are not expecting too much out of it and here's why: After the dealer came out, the thing ran hot and we couldn't have been more happy with it. No, it didn't heat our whole house but it was comfortable in rooms that are 25 feel from the stove, instead of a balmy 56. But it only runs like that for about a day after he's here and then it starts acting up again. Even though I take the entire thing apart and clean it each week. I did buy a brush to clean the exhaust pipe and different pellets and will see if that makes a difference this weekend.

[/quote]
Note the temperatures outdoors on the days it heated the house compared to when not heating the house.

 

[alternativeheat]

Could bad air flow cause the stove to run so dirty? We did have the 6 blink issue early on, indicating poor combustion.

And when I say the ash pan is full after one bag, I mean it is completely full. That was what was most surprising to us when the repair guy came out last week--it ran great that first 24 hrs and there were no ashes in the pan. We are used to it starting to fill within the first 15 mins it's on.

That I have to admit is odd that it did not fill the ash pan after the repair guy left.. Yes, bad airflow could cause a stove to run dirty.

 

[EricHahn]

I do see what you're saying. It has been extremely cold here in Missouri. But that would not cause the stove to run so dirty and inefficient. Something is not right with it, and I can't figure out what it is. Even if it is 7 degrees outside, you should still feel hot air and not lukewarm when you stand 2 feet away from it.

 

[F4jock]

Sounds like a combination of poor installation, poor insulation, bad pellets and not fully undestanding how the stove operates. Don't blame the stove. My insert works fine and so, apparently, did yours. It can do so again.

Tell us more about your install. Did you do it or the dealer? Do you have an OAK? What size is your vent piping? How is it run? What size room are you trying to heat? The airflow from the stove is not a blowtorch and never will be BTW. I go a month and more between cleanings and weeks between ash pan dumps burning a bag plus a day.

 

[alternativeheat]

Ok, it's time for complete information. Size of venting, how long, horizontal or vertical ? You are running in Stove temp mode we have that, feed rate 4 we have that. The house is loose, we have that. I assume no outside air kit ?

I do see what you're saying. It has been extremely cold here in Missouri. But that would not cause the stove to run so dirty and inefficient. Something is not right with it, and I can't figure out what it is. Even if it is 7 degrees outside, you should still feel hot air and not lukewarm when you stand 2 feet away from it.

Eric, the stove has to feed right, get sufficient air and vent right in order to make heat. Not all ash ends up in the ash pan as I am sure you are aware. You see ash collecting on internal components and in the ash pan. What you can't see is the ash that goes up the vent. Quite a bit does just that, up and all the way out and also collecting inside the vent system. If not venting correctly due to what ever reason, lets say ash in this case, then the fire gets dirty, you get incomplete burn. Not only will the ash and hot gasses not vent but they have to go someplace and collects everywhere in the stove. If that gets bad enough it can first, get dangerous, second eventually just snuff the stove out. I am not saying this is the case here, I'm saying that's how it works.

What is your venting configuration, size of pipe and lengths please ? Elbows used etc. Do you know if you have met EVL requirements ?