I have a Hudson river pellet stove Chatham model that I've had for about 3 years no issues. Last week I started getting a lazy flame and the burntpot would overfill and even start a fire in the ashpan. I thoroughly cleaned broke it all down still the same thing. The weird part is even if I open the damper the flame doesn't change which was never the case the more open the damper the more intense to flame was but now nothing. Any suggestions?
Hudson river pellet stove chatham
- Thread starter Kschwarz
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the air path from intake to chimney cap is restricted somewhere.. did you have these out and cleaned behind them?
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JRemington
Minister of Fire
We have sold hundreds of these stoves and they are easy to diagnose. If it ran good to years and the chimneys clean, that isn’t the issue. Is your burn pot holder locked into the two holes? Is there carbon build up on the sides of the burn pot? Ash pan tight and latched? If the fire isn’t changing by moving the draft lever you either have a plug up in the combustion pathway, something allowing air in or a weak combustion blower. How close are you to Watertown?
I will check all those things, its driving me nuts. Watertown is 3 hours north i believe we are in windham ny. It was all of a sudden, I assumed it just needed a thorough cleaning. But no change
Connecticut Yankee
Burning Hunk
I would verify that the the flue is indeed clean. Open your cleanout T's, vaccum out any ash, run a brush as far up the flue as you can, to make sure there are no obstructions. Try the leaf-blower trick. (You can either try blowing up the flue from the clean-out or down from the top into the stove; there are ways of coping with the ash blown into the stove by the latter method, but you'll have to do a search on this forum to find them.)
Make sure to scrape the burn pot liner and verify that the holes in front of the air intake and the ignitor are clear of any obstruction. And this may sound insulting, but it's easy to put the liner in the burn pot the wrong way. Make sure the higher edge is towards the front of the stove. The burn pot itself may also need some scraping, so that air can get through the holes in the bottom of the liner.
If you have an outside air kit installed, run a brush all the way through to eliminate the possibility of an obstruction. If not, put your ash vacuum hose up to the tube on the outside of the stove and see if the tube can be cleared that way. You can also take the top and side cast iron panels off to get at the combustion blower (on your left as you face the stove) to see if it needs cleaning.
There are also instructions in the manual for adjusting the feed trim and the combustion blower speed, but they should not have gone out of whack suddenly, unless there's someone in the house who might have fiddled around with the controls.
Hope one of these ideas helps. The only times I've seen pellets building up in my Chatham have occurred when someone (not me) didn't know to empty the burn pot before re-starting or when clinkers built up in the pot. These problems were related to the quality of the pellets we were burning last year, so it is possible that you got a couple of bad bags in your pallet, and the problem may go away in a few bags. How likely that's the explanation, though, I couldn't tell you. I can tell you, however, that the cleaner you can get the stove, the better off it behaves. I love my Chatham, but it is fairly high-maintenance.
Make sure to scrape the burn pot liner and verify that the holes in front of the air intake and the ignitor are clear of any obstruction. And this may sound insulting, but it's easy to put the liner in the burn pot the wrong way. Make sure the higher edge is towards the front of the stove. The burn pot itself may also need some scraping, so that air can get through the holes in the bottom of the liner.
If you have an outside air kit installed, run a brush all the way through to eliminate the possibility of an obstruction. If not, put your ash vacuum hose up to the tube on the outside of the stove and see if the tube can be cleared that way. You can also take the top and side cast iron panels off to get at the combustion blower (on your left as you face the stove) to see if it needs cleaning.
There are also instructions in the manual for adjusting the feed trim and the combustion blower speed, but they should not have gone out of whack suddenly, unless there's someone in the house who might have fiddled around with the controls.
Hope one of these ideas helps. The only times I've seen pellets building up in my Chatham have occurred when someone (not me) didn't know to empty the burn pot before re-starting or when clinkers built up in the pot. These problems were related to the quality of the pellets we were burning last year, so it is possible that you got a couple of bad bags in your pallet, and the problem may go away in a few bags. How likely that's the explanation, though, I couldn't tell you. I can tell you, however, that the cleaner you can get the stove, the better off it behaves. I love my Chatham, but it is fairly high-maintenance.
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