Maine WOods Pellets

[sparkydog00]

I am the embarrassed owner of 3 tons of these beuties. These pellets stink. They leave too much ash. The ash is the consistancy of sand...not the typical fly ash from other pellets. The glass starts to brown over within the first 2 or 3 bags burned. The burnpot needs to be cleaned every 10 bags or so. Other pellets wouldn't fill the ashpot till 3/4 of a ton. Have tried all types of setting in my Harman Accentra Insert to no avail. The ash from these pellets doesn't get pushed out of the burnpot like all the other pellets I have burned. Instead they seem to form a dam in the front and slowly choke out tyhe fire. If I wasn't there to facilitate the cleaning of the burnpot...the fire would be extighushed from ash build up.
Anybody have a positive report...or any other help in burning these sub standard pellets?

 

[richkorn]

Search on Maine Woods/Athens- You'll find a lot of posts!

 

[j00fek]

https://www.hearth.com/talk/threads/24941/

 

[sparkydog00]

I haven't tried dumping them on the front lawn and lighting them with a blow torch...but am on the verge of it!

 

[sydney1963]

When you say clean your burn pot, do you need to shut down and scrape? I clean my burn pot every day (scoop out ash) and 2x per week take it apart and scrape the pot. Normal operation.

 

[sparkydog00]

When you say clean your burn pot, do you need to shut down and scrape? I clean my burn pot every day (scoop out ash) and 2x per week take it apart and scrape the pot. Normal operation.

I scrape the burnpot everytime I look at the stove now...every 3 to 4 hours. This entails sticking my hand in harms way with the little scraping tool that Harmen supplied with the stove and scrapping the burning burn pot. i don't shut down to do this.
Once a week to vac out the stove and scrape the pot really well. Do this with the fire out.
No this isn't normal operation for every other brand of premium pellet i have burnt. Should be able to burn more than 1/2 a ton before I have to empty the ash pan. The other premium brand vary very little in the amount of ash. These get maybe 8 to 10 bags before I have to empty the ash pan. These are not premium pellets!

 

[slls]

They started out making industrial pellets, look like that is all they make.

 

[sparkydog00]

They started out making industrial pellets, look like that is all they make.

That would be my guess.

 

[sparkydog00]

Once again...just keeping the fire warm on this company!

 

[Glenn Angell]

I have a Harmon Accentra insert now for 4 years. Prior to burning this years alotment of Athens pellets I had alsways burned New England Hardwood premium pellet's. I am very disappointed with the Athens pellets. I was eager to buy these pellets thinking it would be good to support the local economy and figured they were pretty good pellets being from Maine and all., wrong! These are some of the things I've noticed since going to the Athens Maine pellets
1. The pellets are not a consistent size, I prevacuum the pellet's to remove the fines the best I can. I never had to do this with the NEP.
2. The stove runs longer to heat the house, I keep the stove set at 70 during the day.
3. In stead of burning 1- 40lb. bag per day with the NEP, I now burn 2-2.5 bags per day with the Athens pellets.
4. I now clean the stove once a week, a total breakdown except for pulling out the stove from the wall and cleaning the fans and probes . I only do that once a year.
5. The glass gets dirtier much faster, the grates are the same but the V shaped wall in back of the grates gets very sooted up and requires scraping every week.
6. The ash content is not even close to the NEP. The ash hopper needs to be emptied every 4-5 days before it overflows over the sides of the tray.
7. The amount of clinkers frustrates me the most. I have woken up twice now to a cold house.The auto igniter didn't work because of the amount of crud built up in the burn pot. The Harman tool and elbow grease works well to get it out. When I burned the New England Hardwood premium pellets, I never once in 4 years had to chip the black lumps of slag out of the burn pot. Come to find out that is the reason it was not relighting the pellets.

I worry what this is doing to my chimney. I had a chimney guy come out this Summer and sleeve the whole chimney. He commented how clean the chimney was after burning 4 years worth of pellets ( New England Wood Pellets). Now that I have 3.5 tons of the Athens and knowing what it is doing to the stove I wonder what shape my chimney will be in.

 

[slls]

I was told that a local oil company was buying up Maine woods Athens pellets and storing them, I hope so LOL.

 

[hossthehermit]

I was told that a local oil company was buying up Maine woods Athens pellets and storing them, I hope so LOL.

Yeah, and I was told our "President -in- Waiting" is gonna create 2 1/2 million new jobs and give everybody a new Cadillac when we bail out the "Big Three".

 

[Glenn Angell]

For the life of me , I can't understand why a oil company would want to do that.

 

[LeonMSPT]

Contact the company to let them know? Maybe they had a bad batch, and might help out?

Can't know if you don't ask. Most companies will try to maintain good PR and avoid negative publicity like this.

 

[Saltair]

There is a thread on here that is at least nine pages long on just this topic. Do a quick search and start reading. You are not alone.

 

[sparkydog00]

Contact the company to let them know? Maybe they had a bad batch, and might help out?

Can't know if you don't ask. Most companies will try to maintain good PR and avoid negative publicity like this.

They are quite pleasant over the phone. Of course this is if you are pleasant with them.
But seeing that I don't live within travelling distance to the mill in Athens...I have to deal with my local distributor.
Otherwise i would put them in a trailer and bring them back to Athens for full explanation and refund!
These pellets are not premium.
Someone in another thread stated that the mill admitted to putting bark in the mix. that would explain the black flakes that seem to be scattered throughout the pellet. And the crappy burning.

 

[Glenn Angell]

Im not so sure the pellets they will give me in return would be any better than the ones I returned. Taking them back sounds great but I would incur some additional expense to get them there. Moving and loading them out from my basement, diesel for my truck and rental of a dump trailer for the unpalletized pellets not to mention the time taken out of the work day. I just wish they didn't cut the corners to begin with, they have really shot themselves in the foot so early out of the gate, bing that they just started making pellets. You would think Athens would want to make a good name and reputation for themselves.
But what do I know!

 

[slls]

New company, never seen a winter, you took a chance and sorry to say you lost. I will buy Maine if it is a good product, I won't just buy because it is Maine made.

 

[slls]

For the life of me , I can't understand why a oil company would want to do that.

To make money, some sell oil, pellets and coal. If the price of oil goes up they can sell high, I think they got stuck in more ways than one.

 

[slls]

I was told that a local oil company was buying up Maine woods Athens pellets and storing them, I hope so LOL.

Yeah, and I was told our "President -in- Waiting" is gonna create 2 1/2 million new jobs and give everybody a new Cadillac when we bail out the "Big Three".

You can have my Cadillac, want no part of it. We needed another Republican, then we could all go on welfare.

 

[Glenn Angell]

Being that it was their first year in production, I had to go with the word of the distributor. I called him last week and he stated that they (Athens) had made some changes to there pellets and that if I wanted to come and get a few bags of them and see how they burn he would let me do that. Yea, lets pour a little more salt in the wound I'm thinking to myself. Nope, no more Athens pellets in this house...

 

[sparkydog00]

Being that it was their first year in production, I had to go with the word of the distributor. I called him last week and he stated that they (Athens) had made some changes to there pellets and that if I wanted to come and get a few bags of them and see how they burn he would let me do that. Yea, lets pour a little more salt in the wound I'm thinking to myself. Nope, no more Athens pellets in this house...

How did you get rid of the ones you have in the house already?
I noticed that they don't put out enough heat during the last NE cold snap. Was having trouble maintaining temp...so i am scared about the typical January freeze. So therefore I am procuring some NE wood pellets so i don't freeze. Will have to burn these Maine Wood Pellets when the weather is more suited to them. So lots of ash...not much heat! Great pellets!
For the numbnut that said I should have known better...you are right...but I have in 8 years of burning pellets never experienced pellets of this quality. (or lack of)
Another Burned and ticked off Maine WOods customer!
Wouldn't buy another product from this firm...even if they were giving them away...
Well maybe if they paid me to burn them out on my front lawn I would do it!

 

[pellet0708]

With our new pellets (Lignetics) we can now burn the stove on a much lower setting and get more heat. Try mixin them in with your new ones to get rid of them.

 

[pduby]

pellet0708-

where did you find the Lignetics in Maine? Curious - we are located in the Portland area - hopefullly it is near us!! We tried Penningtons and WHAT A DIFFERENCE compared to the Athens. We had (and I measured) 6 cups daily buring 3 bags/day and not staying warm. With the Penningtons we used almost 2 bags/day - more heat - and could go up to 4 days without cleaning it. To us this was such a major change I can only image how the Lignetics are as seem to be #1.

 

[Glenn Angell]

I'm considering buying another 1-2 tons to mix into the Athens pellets. I'm burning way to much pellet for the amount of heat in return. I really didn't want to mess with another 100 bags of pellets but it's looking like I may have to. Given the rate at which I'm using up these pellets I'll be out by mid Febuary. I've learned a valuable lesson. I wish I had known about this forum this fall when I was shopping for pellets. Live and learn.