Hi

[bdcbean]

I have been browsing this forum for a while and thought I would join up and introduce myself.

My name is Ben and I am the production manager for Eco Flame here in New Zealand. We are a New Zealand owned company that designs and manufactures pellet fires for the New Zealand market currently. We also sell pellet fuel.

This forum has been very helpful for me in understanding some of the problems that come with pellet fires, most of which as the installers etc on here have said is cleaning or education of the customer.

At the moment we have one model on the market, it looks a bit different to most of the Canadian/American Pellet fires but internally is a lot the same of course.
I am constantly looking at ways to make the fire innovative and come up with new ideas for ease of use for the customer. There are some great ideas as of late do to with removing clinker that I like a lot but I have some ideas of my own.
My biggest problem with customers when they use some fuel thats not so great is that they cannot use the auto start feature in the morning due to the buildup from the night before, fouling the burnpot.

We have a new model coming out soon that I intend to add a lot of changes to including a host of new improvements to it's current program.

If anyone has questions or maybe can enlighten me with some of their own pet hates with current Pellet Fire technology feel free to reply

Thanks,

Ben

 

[johnnywarm]

do you have a picture of the stove??

 

[bdcbean]

There ya go.
The grills come in different colours.

This model is quite large, the next one will be smaller as well as have inbuilt models.

Pellet fires are great fun, I just love tinkering with them.

(broken image removed)

 

[johnnywarm]

There ya go.
The grills come in different colours.

This model is quite large, the next one will be smaller as well as have inbuilt models.

Pellet fires are great fun, I just love tinkering with them.

(broken image removed)

That looks very nice. The "inbuilt models" you talk about are they what we call "fireplace incerts"??


The pic is better then a thousand words. Thank you. JW.

 

[bdcbean]

Yes sorry an inbuilt model. A lot of people like to replace their old wood burners with a pellet fire, but don't want it sitting half way out in the room..

It's a top feeding pellet fire with an extraction fan for combustion, the heat tubes are the common round setup. You can sort of see from the image here: (broken image removed)

I have noticed the ////// style heat tubes in other models which I found interesting as well as how long some were, going all the way down the back of the fire box.

Hows the North East these days? I use to live in Maine for a while. Lived in a little place called Gardiner.

 

[bdcbean]

A question I have if there are any experts in control systems and feedback loops.

Are their any pellet fires that monitor exhaust gas and make changes to the air/pellet ratio on the fly to guarantee the optimum burn quality?
Currently they all seem to just switch fan/auger speed dependant on temps, and have setting for different ratios depending on heat settings.

I can just see something like this helping a lot with different fuels and quality, different setups etc. If the fire could regulate it's self.
I was thinking of trying something like an 02 sensor from a car to get numbers, in the end it's basically a engine that needs the correct air/fuel ratio to burn the best it can..

It may not be perfect as the pellet feed via auger is not exactly 100% constant, it dumps small amount and every now and again a large amount. This all depends on the size of the pellets of course.
I have been experimenting with a fan speed control to see just what numbers work.

One thing I did note about our fire, on high after about 15mins running (so it's hot) was that the Magnehelic readings seemed a lot lower than those of other fires. I was getting 0.6-0.7 WC in the fire box when I had a nice constant flame. If I wound it up to 0.13-0.15 like many other fires seem to run, it had far to much air and would burn the pellets away.
Any thoughts on these numbers? Does the size of the fire box etc effect this?

It runs 11kw with it's current settings, so adding more fuel would not be the answer.. it puts out a great amount of heat with 0.7WC firebox draft.

 

[Xena]

Welcome to our forum Ben! Glad to have you aboard.
The stove looks nice.

 

[johnnywarm]

Will you make the fireplace incert style??

 

[bdcbean]

Yep one auger.

We may make a version of this fire insert, but I like the idea of the fire being almost completely flush not the half in half out type of insert fire. You still need a way to load the pellets though.

 

[johnnywarm]

Yep one auger.

We may make a version of this fire insert, but I like the idea of the fire being almost completely flush not the half in half out type of insert fire. You still need a way to load the pellets though.

True

 

[johnnywarm]

Yes sorry an inbuilt model. A lot of people like to replace their old wood burners with a pellet fire, but don't want it sitting half way out in the room..

It's a top feeding pellet fire with an extraction fan for combustion, the heat tubes are the common round setup. You can sort of see from the image here: (broken image removed)

I have noticed the ////// style heat tubes in other models which I found interesting as well as how long some were, going all the way down the back of the fire box.

Hows the North East these days? I use to live in Maine for a while. Lived in a little place called Gardiner.

so its 1 auger that rises & feeds to firebox?
colder than normal winter just passed & it seems colder than normal eeven now! above normal precipitation too. record snowfall year for N maine & aroostok county got some serious flooding in parts.

We in Connecticut have had a very hot & humid summer with allot of rain.

 

[bdcbean]

Tha augers are quite slow rpm high torque and can easily crush up any pellets that get in the way. Fines are a problem especially when people do not treat the pellets well.. and they end up crushed.

I do like the look of the Harman side feed units, what concerns me with some of the more technical fires on the marker are the amount of small moving parts! The agitators on some fires is also rather interesting.