Bought April 2012. Started failing to ignite after a week. Have to manually light about 1x per week. I clean daily. Professionally cleaned and repaired all electronic parts replaced 2x. I'm at my wit's end! Any ideas?
Harman Accentra Pellet Stove often fails to ignite
- Thread starter ejames
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well, in my experience, the igniter either works or it doesn't....."sometimes" ignition is almost always a function of the stove not being cleaned sufficiently, OR something being missed in cleaning......also possible that if the igniter was replaced recently, the cover plate was put on incorrectly
Same issue with our 2005 Accentra Insert. Sometimes works and sometimes doesn't. I replaced the igniter with a new one and make sure the bottom of the pot is very clean - no clinker build up. It does seem that the least little build up acts as a heat insulator which does not cause the pellets in the pot to get hot enough to fire up. That has helped but sometimes the stove still will not light. I'll unplug it, remove all the pellets from the pot and start over and usually that will do it. However if we are away and stove cycles off and on and this happens, I come home to a cold house and an ash pan full of unburned pellets. Last winter I used the toggle switch in the manual position (after getting to stove going) which makes the stove burn continuously. Went through more bags than usual but did not have to worry about the stove not lighting either. If I burn 10 more bags a season using manual light, it's still cheaper than a service call where it probably wouldn't get fixed anyways as it's such an intermittent issue.
test the igniter- 44-50 ohms resistance across the leads.....if you're getting this resistance, its NOT the igniter.....cover plate might be on wrong tho, holes maybe plugged, ash on top of igniter, etc. We see a lot of igniters come in with folks saying they are "gone", but when we test them, they test fine. When we pigtail em to line voltage, they heat up well too......standing by the cleaning thing....
I have run into some pellets that don't like to ignite...no idea why. I have also fixed the intermittent ignition (on occasion) by giving the combustion blower pot a bit of an anti-clockwise turn to reduce the voltage. Slows down the incoming air, gives it a bit more opportunity to get up to temp. Frequently see slag/carbon/clinker form on the top of the igniter bracket...only way to remove it is to drop the igniter. If you frequently clean the area under the burnpot, but not the actual igniter then this would be my first guess.
Burn pot nuts not on tight, missing but pot gasket, igniter cradle bent gasket not cut out of oak thimble loose common connection at air sensor
yep, saying "my stove wont light", or "feeder wont feed", is akin to saying "my car wont start".......and offering up no more info. Theres a multitude of reasons why this happens, sometimes simple as cleaning, sometimes simple as its 96 freaking degrees outside and your stove is set at 70........
All kinds of silliness. Most of the time its something simple. Then there are those stubborn stoves that just don't want to give up any information as to what the issue is...those are the ones that I dread.
Hello
I have also seen the case where the ignitor itself had corrosion and carbon on it. All I did was remove the ignitor and brush it down nice with a small wire brush, put it back in and the stove started like a champ everytime!
These 2 brush kits are my cheapest tools, but the most used on pellet stoves!
Detail brush kit
http://www.harborfreight.com/6-piece-detail-brush-set-93610.html
Tube brush kit
http://www.harborfreight.com/10-piece-tube-brush-kit-95947.html
I have also seen the case where the ignitor itself had corrosion and carbon on it. All I did was remove the ignitor and brush it down nice with a small wire brush, put it back in and the stove started like a champ everytime!
These 2 brush kits are my cheapest tools, but the most used on pellet stoves!
Detail brush kit
http://www.harborfreight.com/6-piece-detail-brush-set-93610.html
Tube brush kit
http://www.harborfreight.com/10-piece-tube-brush-kit-95947.html
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