So, I have been using this old Trail Blazer stove for a month or two now. The model is a "1600 Classic PS" or something similar.
The stove is vintage 1994 or so, and the manufacturer is long out of business. It was a freebie. I have been looking for a manual or any other literature, but so far have come up empty-handed. Most of the pellet stove information I have found relates to modern units festooned with bells and whistles.
This thing is quite primitive by today's standards. No auto-ignition, no thermostat. It does have all of the basic safety features, though.
I have been experiencing an issue for the past week or so related to excessive augur feed rates in relation to the burn. If run on anything but "low", the pellets would quickly fill and overflow the burn pot, choking the combustion. There are two trimpots accessible by small screwdriver for the augur feed rate. One is marked "H" and one is marked "L". The "L" trim was responsive to adjustment, but the "H" screw seemed to do nothing.
The augur cycles once about every ten seconds. The pots control the length of the augur cycle, thus controlling the amount of fuel dumped into the burn pot. Try as I might to fine tune these adjustments, it would overfill and nearly kill the fire if the output control was set anywhere but "Low".
As the nights have been getting colder, This has become more of a concern. The "Low" setting just doesn't cut it when the outside temps are in the 30s.
This morning, my wife shut it down around 10:30 in preparation to leave for work. I had left about 6:00, after putting the stove into "shutdown" mode for several minutes to burn out some of the unburned fuel. I set it to "Low" before leaving, and it feebly attempted to heat the house until she shut it down.
Arriving home this afternoon, I got a wild hair and decided to investigate the beast a little bit. I pulled off the cover attached to the control board and poked around with a flashlight. The board is very simple, no Pentium processors here. A couple of chips, a few capacitors and resistors pretty much sum it up. I looked at the solder joints, but didn't see anything obviously wrong.
I blew out the trimpots, hoping that maybe they were just dirty. Looking around inside the stove, I could see the ONE blower fan. The same fan is used for combustion and convection. There does not appear to be an exhaust fan on the vent pipe.
One fan does it all. It is mounted in the stove base, and essentially pressurizes the the entire stove. It pushes air into the heat exchangers, and under the burn pot as well (!). After my visual perusings, I put it back together and lit it.
I have noticed in the past that I could feel a fair amount of air escaping the left side panel at the front. I never thought much about it, but today after lighting the stove, I gave the panel a whack and it popped back in. The air leak is now nearly gone.
The effect on the combustion was immediate. The feed rate is no longer excessive, and the stove is burning very well right now.
I guess sometimes, you just need to kick it.
The stove is vintage 1994 or so, and the manufacturer is long out of business. It was a freebie. I have been looking for a manual or any other literature, but so far have come up empty-handed. Most of the pellet stove information I have found relates to modern units festooned with bells and whistles.
This thing is quite primitive by today's standards. No auto-ignition, no thermostat. It does have all of the basic safety features, though.
I have been experiencing an issue for the past week or so related to excessive augur feed rates in relation to the burn. If run on anything but "low", the pellets would quickly fill and overflow the burn pot, choking the combustion. There are two trimpots accessible by small screwdriver for the augur feed rate. One is marked "H" and one is marked "L". The "L" trim was responsive to adjustment, but the "H" screw seemed to do nothing.
The augur cycles once about every ten seconds. The pots control the length of the augur cycle, thus controlling the amount of fuel dumped into the burn pot. Try as I might to fine tune these adjustments, it would overfill and nearly kill the fire if the output control was set anywhere but "Low".
As the nights have been getting colder, This has become more of a concern. The "Low" setting just doesn't cut it when the outside temps are in the 30s.
This morning, my wife shut it down around 10:30 in preparation to leave for work. I had left about 6:00, after putting the stove into "shutdown" mode for several minutes to burn out some of the unburned fuel. I set it to "Low" before leaving, and it feebly attempted to heat the house until she shut it down.
Arriving home this afternoon, I got a wild hair and decided to investigate the beast a little bit. I pulled off the cover attached to the control board and poked around with a flashlight. The board is very simple, no Pentium processors here. A couple of chips, a few capacitors and resistors pretty much sum it up. I looked at the solder joints, but didn't see anything obviously wrong.
I blew out the trimpots, hoping that maybe they were just dirty. Looking around inside the stove, I could see the ONE blower fan. The same fan is used for combustion and convection. There does not appear to be an exhaust fan on the vent pipe.
One fan does it all. It is mounted in the stove base, and essentially pressurizes the the entire stove. It pushes air into the heat exchangers, and under the burn pot as well (!). After my visual perusings, I put it back together and lit it.
I have noticed in the past that I could feel a fair amount of air escaping the left side panel at the front. I never thought much about it, but today after lighting the stove, I gave the panel a whack and it popped back in. The air leak is now nearly gone.
The effect on the combustion was immediate. The feed rate is no longer excessive, and the stove is burning very well right now.
I guess sometimes, you just need to kick it.
