Looking for answers (like everyone!)

[pelletburnernewbie]

Hi all - this is my first post.......I hope I have come to the right page. We recently bought a US Stove. We set it up the first day and ran it with no outside air. It seemed to work fine. I believe our manual said it needed outside air, so we added the necessary stuff. The stove is in the basement.
Since then we have not been able to get the stove to burn correctly. It will burn for awhile, but the burn/ash pot fills up fast, the pellets (or ash) smoulders and goes out, creating a LOT of smoke. The flame while it is burning is weak since we added the air intake. We called US Stove once and they had us change the settings, but it has not made much of a difference. Is anyone familiar with this stove? Its a 5510. Any suggestions will be greatly appreciated. Thanks

 

[webbie]

Have you simply tried disconnecting the Outside air to see if that makes it clean again?

Is the outside air definitely hooked with the right size pipe and clear?

hard to imagine that this made a big difference all by itself.

 

[pelletburnernewbie]

:roll: Thanks for the reply.....I think that you are quite right about the outside air not making that much of a difference. AFTER I posted that message I read some of the other postings regarding feed to air ratio. We are experimenting with that, and so far it seems to have solved the problem (fingers crossed)! Thanks again!

 

[MrKLeen]

I had the same basic problem, if I ran it on a low air and pellet feed setting , the glass would blacken in a day and I would have 2 inches of ash. the only way it worked OK was on a low pellet feed and high air intake.

When I installed the outdoor air intake I used 3 inch aluminum flex pipe and a screened and louvered (always open) aluminum soffit vent. The screen and the louvers seem to have been too obstructive. I switched it to a 3 inch dryer vent hood (After removing the flap) and I have not had the problem. I am able to run low or high settings now. Don't know if this applies to you but it doesn't seem to take a lot to restrict the air flow.

So although playing with the air to pellet ratio helped, this seems to have solved my issue.

 

[pelletburnernewbie]

OK - thanks. I will be sure to keep this posting.....we started sort of all over again today. We had the same thing - blackened glass in one day, and a LOT of ash also. This morning after cleaning all the ash and window AGAIN - we set it 2 and 2. This kept an even flame, and the window clear, but not much heat. Then we notched it up to 3 and 3, and that seems to be working. I am the typist and my other half is the handyman so I am not sure of the types of pipe etc....I know the outside air pipe in 3" and it is direct vented thru the concrete wall of the basement. He has read all the instructions and diagrams and pretty much followed all that to the letter. Right now all is well and we are waiting to see if that remains true overnight. Thank you again for your input....we were getting pretty discouraged, but feel a lot better now. Just knowing that others have had and solved the same problem makes a big difference!

 

[pelletburnernewbie]

To MrKleen: Well we did try the air to feed ratio which worked for awhile.....but not overnight! I discovered I was mistaken about the diameter of the outside air pipe....it was half of what I thought it was. So today we changed it to a 3" pipe and a different top (this was after we disconnected the smaller pipe altogether).
It did run much better with the outside air vent disconnected.....so I am sure that the bigger pipe will make the difference. We shut the stove down today cuz the weather here got considerably warmer. When it gets colder (we are sure it wont be long) we will fire it up again. Thanks so much for all the ideas....we really appreciate it. This forum is a great help.