We just bought a Harman XXV pellet stove from a dealer showroom in August 2019 and my husband installed it up to code et al. in October. We've burned 2.5 tons of pellets in it now (January 28 2020) and have been cleaning weekly along the way. Last week, I noticed the ash pan was overflowing and up to the inside of the door, which was odd since my husband had just dumped it out completely the night before, after its usual 1-week build up. When I opened the stove, the ash pan was overflowing with what looked like singed pellets covered in ash (not just ash). I guess we had the feed rate up too high, and pellets were getting pushed into the burn pot too quickly. I shut down the stove and cleaned it all out, and plugged it back in and got it going back at the factory default settings, and it worked except now it started setting off a "Door Open Warning" alert every 5-7 minutes, which then shut down the stove for about 2-3 minutes, and then it would go off by itself and start running again, and continue doing that over and over again all day. Later that night, I woke up to a "Combustion Error" warning message and the stove was completely shut off. The house had gone down to 58.
The door open warning has continued for a week, and the combustion error had started showing up more frequently, shutting off the stove. The other day, we did a deep clean where we took everything apart and followed every instruction to a T. No dice. Today, I thought I would take another look and try to clean out the combustion blower and ash pan myself, so I ran a paintbrush around the fan blades and brushed a bunch of fly ash out of it, and when I put everything back together, the stove started up its ignition and then began spitting smoke from the back right-hand panel where I had just cleaned the blower. Scary! I panicked and unplugged the unit but that didn't prevent smoke from spilling into the room. My husband suggested I had maybe not screwed things back in right so I checked again and sure enough, I forgot to completely secure the rod that supports the bottom of the combustion blower fan, so I screwed that back in tighter and then fired up the unit again. This time, everything was fine UNTIL ignition. When the pellets ignited, smoke started billowing out of the stove around the heat exchanger area in the front, inside the firebox (but it wasn't smoke from the actual burning pellets, it was coming from somewhere else). When I closed the door, smoke came out the top of the stove where the warm air usually blows into the room. I unplugged the unit right away. Now our house smells like smoke, and we have no working unit. Technician is coming on Thursday morning, but until then we have to stay with family. The house is freezing and our oil delivery isn't until tmrw.
We are SO disappointed, as this is a new unit, and we were confident we were making a good choice by installing this as our primary heat so as to avoid relying on our oil furnace. Would love any thoughts on what is going on with this stove which was NOT by any means CHEAP.
The door open warning has continued for a week, and the combustion error had started showing up more frequently, shutting off the stove. The other day, we did a deep clean where we took everything apart and followed every instruction to a T. No dice. Today, I thought I would take another look and try to clean out the combustion blower and ash pan myself, so I ran a paintbrush around the fan blades and brushed a bunch of fly ash out of it, and when I put everything back together, the stove started up its ignition and then began spitting smoke from the back right-hand panel where I had just cleaned the blower. Scary! I panicked and unplugged the unit but that didn't prevent smoke from spilling into the room. My husband suggested I had maybe not screwed things back in right so I checked again and sure enough, I forgot to completely secure the rod that supports the bottom of the combustion blower fan, so I screwed that back in tighter and then fired up the unit again. This time, everything was fine UNTIL ignition. When the pellets ignited, smoke started billowing out of the stove around the heat exchanger area in the front, inside the firebox (but it wasn't smoke from the actual burning pellets, it was coming from somewhere else). When I closed the door, smoke came out the top of the stove where the warm air usually blows into the room. I unplugged the unit right away. Now our house smells like smoke, and we have no working unit. Technician is coming on Thursday morning, but until then we have to stay with family. The house is freezing and our oil delivery isn't until tmrw.
We are SO disappointed, as this is a new unit, and we were confident we were making a good choice by installing this as our primary heat so as to avoid relying on our oil furnace. Would love any thoughts on what is going on with this stove which was NOT by any means CHEAP.
