Looking for info for first time purchase.

[bobcat1911]

Hello everyone, first time posting here, I am finally ready to purchase my first pellet stove, I've heated with wood my entire life, had many different brands of stoves over the years, some good, some, not so good, I am currently using a Harmon Exception, probably one of, if not the very first one made, for the most part, it has served me well, but, there has been issues that customer service from Harmon just won't address, they refuse to talk to me about any problems that I have with my stove, even my local dealer has said, after researching my serial number, they can't help me, so, purchasing a Harmon pellet stove is out, what are the next best options? I have looked at several makes, such as St Croix, Englander, US Stove Quadrafire, there are many choices, but in reading all the threads in these forums, every manufacturer has problems, is there one stove that doesn't have reliability issues? I guess what I'd like is something in the 50,000 + BTU range, 60 lb minimum pellet hopper, adjustable speed blower with an ash pan, is there such an animal?

 

[Wilbur Feral]

Quad and Harman are owned by same company. I have had a Quad Mt Vernon AE for about six years with overall good results. Overpriced like crazy IMO, and the proprietary thermostat is not great. But otherwise the stove is very low maintenance, and a good price on a good used one can make them worthwhile. 80 lb. hopper is nice.

 

[rich2500]

I suggest you spend lots of time reading about whats involved with pellet stoves before pulling the trigger, then if your sure that's the route you wanna take then find your best local dealer and then research the stoves that dealer offers.Or you go the no dealer route stoves like Englander, US stove,Drolet that are available through big box stores. There are only a handful of pellet stove manufactures that you will talk too directly if you have a problem so you become dependent on the dealer.Pellet stoves in general are pretty reliable but you got to realize they have many electrical items that keep them ticking so at any time one of those items could fail and your stove is down until you get parts or the dealer comes out to fix it.Then you have the cleaning side of pellet stoves ( which work best when clean ) this vary's depending on stove and pellets burned, some stoves are rather easy to clean some are rather involved with cleaning. Again do your research and make sure a pellet stove is for you.

 

[UpStateNY]

bobcat911, let me say welcome to the forum. As rich2500 said, I would research pellet stoves so you know what your are getting into. If you have problems with a wood stove and think your going to have less problems with a pellet stove, well that is just not possible. Too many moving parts on a pellet stove. By design pellet stoves will have more issues. On the plus side, pellet stove will mean you don't need to worry moving parts that may break on a log splitter or a chain saw.

Personally I have had my Harman pellet stove for 8 years and the only thing that I fixed was the igniter which cost about $100. Some pellet stoves are easier to clean than others. My Harman Advanced takes longer to clean than a Harman P61a pellet stove for example. Cleaning the stove pipe is much easier and worry free on a pellet stove.

I don't have any experience with other pellet stoves. I can't help you with that.

Welcome and good luck.

 

[bobcat1911]

Thank you
Wilbur Feral
rich2500
for responding, I guess I would like to add, I really want to purchase a pellet stove for the same reasons most people do, tired of cutting 4 to 6 cord of wood every year, between the stacking to dry, hauling it indoors in the fall, stacking it again, the messy house, etc, I don't mind spending time on maintenance, and I'm pretty confident I can rig up something in the event of an emergency to keep it going, that being said, I have spent quite a bit of time the last few weeks reading about the pro's and con's, and even though we are getting close to the end of the heating season, I would like to get something in place now, I am a firm believer in "you get what you pay for" but, I have a hard time justifying spending four or five thousand dollars for a Harmon when there are so many stoves in the sub two thousand dollar range, can anyone recommend something that might do what I am looking for? I am not opposed to purchasing used either, so any recommendations about what might be a good pre-owned stove might be would also be welcomed.

 

[bobcat1911]

bobcat911, let me say welcome to the forum. As rich2500 said, I would research pellet stoves so you know what your are getting into. If you have problems with a wood stove and think your going to have less problems with a pellet stove, well that is just not possible. Too many moving parts on a pellet stove. By design pellet stoves will have more issues. On the plus side, pellet stove will mean you don't need to worry moving parts that may break on a log splitter or a chain saw.

Personally I have had my Harman pellet stove for 8 years and the only thing that I fixed was the igniter which cost about $100. Some pellet stoves are easier to clean than others. My Harman Advanced takes longer to clean than a Harman P61a pellet stove for example. Cleaning the stove pipe is much easier and worry free on a pellet stove.

I don't have any experience with other pellet stoves. I can't help you with that.

Welcome and good luck.

Thanks for the post!, the issues with my Harmon wood stove are unrelated to operation, but are concerned with the gasketing on the feed door, basically, Harmon would not honor their warranty on the design flaws that my stove has, all the Harmon Exception stoves that I have seen since I purchased mine are different, I don't know if the realized this and stopped production and changed the design, but they refuse to acknowledge my phone calls or when the actually had an E-Mail address, correspondence from that, I just refuse to do any business with them, I guess it's a matter of principle now, other than the issues I had with the stove, it's been great, I just feel I am ready to move on to something that although it might be more maintenance, it's all at the stove, not out in the woods cutting wood, hauling, stacking etc.

 

[rich2500]

you say you refuse to do business with Harman does that mean on a new purchase or also used,If used also HHT owns Harman, Quadrafire and Heatilator so you would be eliminating those 3 brands, just trying to help figure out the direction you wanna head so everyone has a better Idea for recommendations

 

[Pete Zahria]

You are looking for around 50,000+ btu, that means you want some heat...
Pellet stoves are not gorilla heaters, like wood or coal stoves.
Personally, I would forget about your issues with Harman and your old stove.
If you can.. just bite the bullet and get a P61/68.
I have burned all three fuels Wood first, coal second, and pellets third.
I'm glad I got the biggest pellet stove I could, because if you are used to gorilla heat,
you will be disappointed with a small pellet stove.
Plus.. the P-XX jobs are pretty easy to maintain/clean.
Just my opinion of course, not to be taken as "law"..
But I have no regrets... And in my experience with all three fuel options,
the pellets are the easiest, by far. At this time, maybe not the cheapest,
but that doesn't play into my equation all that heavily.

Dan

 

[Lake Girl]

Welcome to the forum bobcat... A few details might be helpful. Size/layout of house, where will the stove live, what exhaust set-up? Have you given thought to keeping the wood stove and add a pellet stove in another location? Plan to have a inverter generator for power outages?

Pellet stoves still create some mess...

 

[bobcat1911]

Welcome to the forum bobcat... A few details might be helpful. Size/layout of house, where will the stove live, what exhaust set-up? Have you given thought to keeping the wood stove and add a pellet stove in another location? Plan to have a inverter generator for power outages?

Pellet stoves still create some mess...

My home is a two story log, approx, 1800 sq ft, with a full basement, I currently have an oil fired hot air furnace in the basement that is vented into a masonry chimney, on the ground level is where my wood stove currently lives, and it is at the opposite end of the house, its vented into a class A "Metalbestos" chimney, I originally planned to put the pellet stove in the basement, and eliminate the wood stove, but since the brick hearth and chimney would still remain, I figured I would be better off using them to vent the pellet stove, as far as the second story is concerned, our main bedroom is located there and since both me and my wife like it cooler for sleeping, we don't heat it, I currently have a 10K "clean power" generator as I live in a very rural area that has its fair share of power outages, I realize there is a mess associated with the burning of any solid fuel, and am prepared for that too, I just would like to get rid of the yearly job of cutting, stacking, (sometimes twice) and general mess of firewood, I would be happy with an outdoor boiler, but don't have enough sustainable wood to keep up with the demand, and with wood prices being what they are, I couldn't afford to purchase enough, that being said, I have several friends that have pellet stoves, one has a King, from TSC, she has had it for several years and is pretty happy with it, but she has to shut it off and vacuum it out every day in order for it to work properly, another has a Harmon P-43, it works good too, less daily maintenance, but with a original cost of around 3K.
Maybe a pellet stove might not fit my needs, I guess that's why I posted in this forum, so far I have gotten several good responses that have me rethinking my point of view of Harmon stoves, I know they are well made, but I guess I would consider another brand, I just don't know anyone who has had any experience with any others than the two that I have seen, I have learned one thing though, everyone I have spoke too about stoves tell me the same thing, the more you spend, the more happy you will be in the end, anyway thank you everyone who has responded so far, I look forward to reading more posts about my situation.

 

[Husky]

I went from wood to pellet stove just like you are considering. Bought a Harman two years ago and have not had a problem with it yet. I did a lot of research before buying my pellet stove and if money is not an issue than you really do get what you pay for. Good luck with your decision.

 

[alternativeheat]

Ford doesn't support the 1949 Club Coupe anymore. Geeesh.

 

[rich2500]

Another thing to consider is nobody knows where the pellet industry is heading, with several Mills closing what is this going to do for prices of pellets, There is a lot of inventory sitting around right now but when that's all gone we have no idea where prices will end up.So you have to ask if right now is even a good time to invest in a pellet stove especially since you have oil and oil prices are down.

 

[alternativeheat]

(broken link removed to http://thewoodway.com/index.php/heating/oil-stoves/)

 

[UpStateNY]

Check out the posts in this thread. At the bottom of most posts they tell you what stove they have and how old their stove is. As you can see there is more than just Harman stoves being used and you can read how many tons burned the last two years.

https://www.hearth.com/talk/threads/pellets-burned-this-year-versus-last-year.154405/

 

[bobcat1911]

Update, Pulled the trigger on a "used" P -61A, so far it's been great, been burning Energex and Cubex, but going to try some Spruce Point, maintenance has been very limited, glad I went with the Harman.

 

[alternativeheat]

Update, Pulled the trigger on a "used" P -61A, so far it's been great, been burning Energex and Cubex, but going to try some Spruce Point, maintenance has been very limited, glad I went with the Harman.

Congrats on the stove ! Spruce Pointes are a premium pellet, about the same heat as the Energex, maybe a touch less ashy. I liked them when we burned them but I can't seem to secure a decent deal on them.

If your local Home Depot is selling Fireside Ultra, pick up a couple of bags of those to try and see what you think. They should be pretty equal to the Energex as well and often for less money at the BBS.

 

[Lake Girl]

How good a deal did you get on the Harman? Spruce Pointes are what I burn. How much are they costing you in Vermont? $7 cdn. here

 

[bogieb]

Glad to hear that you re-thought your position on Harman. I think you will be happy with the stove. My P61a also liked the Cubex pellets. All my stoves like the FSU that @alternativeheat mentions. Just be aware that in some stoves it can leave a black soot - not creosote, or even heavy, just annoying. My P61a and the former Hastings had that issue. My P43 doesn't have that issue. Apparently it can all depend on the specific stove, specific set up, specific exhaust, and I think what angle it is to the Big Dipper when it rises in January .

I can say that all 3 stoves really like FSU's and if I hadn't gotten a bunch of "fire sale" pellets last spring, I would be loading up on them with HD's 4 ton orders get free delivery offer!

 

[alternativeheat]

My P61a chows down about anything you put in it, I've even put dried but water damaged, swollen pellets in the thing and it never hiccuped. Sometimes I think I should run my wood lathe shavings through it, mix them in with some pellets. It might just burn them too. The difference between pellets; good , bad indifferent, is how many you burn, recovery time on cold nights and how fast ash builds up. Also as Bogie mentioned, is color of ash and ash staining. And lastly pot scraping frequency, as well as level of effort to scrape it off the pot.

Incidentally, Harman has videos on servicing their stoves, weekly ,monthly cleanings etc. You can generally find them in a youtube search , as well as at Harman's site. Save yourself some trouble and watch the one for the P61 9 if you haven't already), especially the point on cleaning out under the burn pot and giving the burn pot a whack now and then to keep the igniter clear of ash. Then you won't be the next one asking why your Harman didn't want to light up LOL. I think we had a bout 6 different people ask that over last winters heating season alone. People seem to miss that step and it's a simple one.

 

[bobcat1911]

How good a deal did you get on the Harman? Spruce Pointes are what I burn. How much are they costing you in Vermont? $7 cdn. here

Stove was 6 years old, I paid $2200 the dealer replaced the ESP probe, the stove had all the options as well, stainless trim, top and bottom, I am paying $220 for the Spruce Pointes , but for a ton, not the 50 bags which are on a standard Canadian pallet.

 

[bobcat1911]

Congrats on the stove ! Spruce Pointes are a premium pellet, about the same heat as the Energex, maybe a touch less ashy. I liked them when we burned them but I can't seem to secure a decent deal on them.

If your local Home Depot is selling Fireside Ultra, pick up a couple of bags of those to try and see what you think. They should be pretty equal to the Energex as well and often for less money at the BBS.

Unfortunately, I don't have any local Home Depot's or Lowes, just local mom and pop hardware stores, but they are very competitive.

 

[alternativeheat]

Unfortunately, I don't have any local Home Depot's or Lowes, just local mom and pop hardware stores, but they are very competitive.

We can't touch the price you are paying for Spruce Pointes around here. Last I knew they were in the mid $7 range US per bag, by the bag or by the ton and if you picked them up or had them delivered. So $350ish per ton.

 

[bobcat1911]

I paid $220.00 per ton would of been $270.00 if I took the whole pallet, I paid $ 225.00 for Energex, $ 220.00 for Cubex.

 

[bogieb]

That is a good price - as others have stated, the Cubex (I don't know about Energex) are around $7/bag around here.