I bought an XXV!

[mtnbiker727]

So I wanted to give a little update. This has been a rollercoaster ride.

We bought an old poorly insulated farmhouse. I installed our P68 in the living room to heat the "main" part of the house, but we have a 450 sq foot single story "back room" that is very cold (lots of old windows). I originally bought an electric infrared heater that looks like a stove, at the recommendation of someone here. We like that little "stove", but it doesn't have enough oomph to warm up that space. Our plan for this summer is to replace windows and doors, insulate and siding, but that's not in the cards for us right now, and it's cold!

I looked at cheap pellet stoves, including the $1,200 one that Tractor Supply has. That little ash tray would need to be dumped every day, and a 30 lb pellet hopper would be extremely frustrating.

I got a quote for a propane combi boiler and baseboards for the first floor, including the back room, thinking I could swap out my electric water heater, and take some pressure off the pellet stove. $16,400. Yeah, No thanks.

So then I started again thinking about mini split/heat pumps. Mr. Cool makes them for DIY people like myself. These systems seem to be very simple to install, but for the three zones I was hoping to heat, the $6,000 purchase price, and time it would take me still didn't look very attractive.

When we bought the house, they had a coal stove in that back room, so we thought about putting that back in. When I went to clean out the stove and found out how filthy coal is, I told my wife "I don't want that in our house...."

So then my wife suggested looking on Facebook Marketplace for another pellet stove. She immediately found a 2005 XXV about 6 miles from us for $2,200. I thought maybe that was a bit steep for a 20 year old stove, but way cheaper and more familiar than my other options. So we went to look at it. This guy recently bought the stove from a former Harman technician, who had installed a brand new auger motor and fan motors, etc. The stove is spotless clean, inside and out, because the current owner never used it. He had it running when we got there so we could see it working, and it runs nice and quiet and smooth! I figured with all new guts, it doesn't matter if the steel is 20 years old, it's practically a new stove.... so we bought it.

Today we're hauling it up to the house and going to situate it in it's new home where I'll measure everything so I can order the venting. I'll share some pictures after we get it in the house.

 

[Burnin Since 1991]

Yes, post some pics and keep us up to date.

 

[mtnbiker727]

So here are a couple pictures. This is a very nice looking stove, a lot fancier than my P68. My wife suggested we swap stove locations, since the plain looking P68 is in the living room, but we definitely need the big boy where he sits to keep the main house warm.

This stove is a lot different than the P68 in a lot of ways. One important difference is the ash pan is hidden inside in a weird place. To remove the ash pan, you have to open the (only) door and then the bottom front of the stove tips down so you can slide the ash pan out. The door gasket has to seal across the part that hinges, which has me a little uneasy, and the dollar bill test would be challenging because of the way it's all laid out. I don't know if anyone else has one of these and can provide any feedback about this? Have you had problems with getting the door to seal tight?

My venting plan is to go straight out through the wall and terminate with a square horizontal termination cap. According to the installation manual, with an outside air kit I can terminate 9" to the side and/or 9" below a window. I think it'll be pretty close to meeting or exceeding those distances.

I'm going to mix and match some pieces of my vent pipe from my other stove install while I'm buying pipe for this stove. I have a 90 and a horizontal termination cap at the top of my vertical pipe (because I had those pieces from the install at our previous house), which I think might be why my P68 is getting so dirty. I'll get one of the vertical termination caps, which should improve airflow quite a bit.

So on my list of things to buy: one Harman appliance adapter, one 3 foot length of Pellet Vent Pro, a wall thimble with 2 inch outside air, and a vertical termination cap (for the other stove). I have a leftover 6 inch length of PVP that I'll use if I need a little extra. I already have a tube of high temp silicone from the P68 install a couple months ago.

Thanks for following along.

 

[Oregun]

I got the XXV several years ago and the only problems so far was the combustion fan got noisy. Also have two MRCOOL heat pumps that I installed (3ton and 1 ton) They are about 8 yrs old and still work well. I have a leaky house so they don't work that well below 40F so at that point I switch to the XXV.
I also bought mine used for $2400 but it had only been used for 1yr or so.
Good Luck with your stove.