Harman Pellet stove ignitors

[Choppedliver]

Hey I wanted to see if anyone else has been having as much of an issue with
Harman pellet stove Ignitors as we have. In the last few years we have not been
able to get more than a few months use out of a Harman ignitor. EnviroFire,
Country, Avalon and even the old Harman pellet stove ignitors have always
lasted 4-6 years with out issue. When I talk to the Harman techs they act like
there is nothing going on but I have had customer burn out 6-8 ignitors in 2-3
years. These guys have been OK to deal with while there stoves have been
under warranty but as soon as there warranty is up I know we will have a ton of
unhappy customers that would be on the hook for a $120 ignitor every few months.

 

[Wood Heat Stoves]

maybe check swing of thermostat, so it doesn't come on and off so frequently...

 

[Choppedliver]

Yeah I know that If you can have it start and stop less often, the Ignitor will last longer but even if we could get our customers to cut that in half there ignitors would only last 4-6 months that still is not going to fly in the long run.

 

[Ladderlieu]

Second season with my XXV and I've still got the original ignitor. Guy I work with bought the same stove two weeks prior to me from the same dealer and he is on his third ignitor. I can't explain it...

Here's what I do this time of year when mother nature warms up and the stove doesn't need to crank all day long. I run the stove in "room temp" mode, set @70, and flip the toggle switch to "manual". If my calculations are correct, this ensures that when the house is up to temp, the stove won't shut down and need to re-ignite to get going again later. The "manual" setting allows a trickle of pellets to keep being fed into the burn pot to sustain it. Yeah, I'll probably use a little more pellets this way. With the outside temp at 44 today, I'm able to stretch a bag of pellets (Okanagan) about 26-28 hours. I can live with that.

 

[DAKSY]

Harman had a BAD run of igniters up until last year...
Their inventory of the crummy ones should be pretty well
depleted by now.
If you run the resistance test on em before they're installed,
you should be getting a reading of 45 - 49 ohms.
Those are the good ones...
The bad ones were in the 49 - 54 ohms range.

 

[mgambuzza]

I'm still on my original ignitor and this is my 3rd burning season. The first two years I had been using Room temp mode, and this year I'm using stove temp mode - less frequent start/stop cycles. I know I have to keep that burn pot clean, and chip out the fused clinkers otherwise that causes a layer of buildup that increases the startup time of the pellets, but other than that no issues. Maybe I'm lucky...