More questions in pellet stove quest

[jbmaine]

Hi, Thank you for your patience in our numerous questions on pellet stoves. In my first post I asked several general questions and got lots of good answers and recommendations. Since then my wife and I have done lots of research and made a couple of road trips looking at stoves. So far we have decided to go with a pellet stove rather than a more efficient wood stove to replace the old wood stove we currently have. A better wood stove would probably be as cheap or cheaper to run than a pellet stove but buying, storing,stacking, re stacking, etc. 4 cord of wood every year is becoming an issue I would rather not have to deal with. Plus I have room in my basement for 4 tons of pellets but not 4 cord of wood. So back to pellet stoves. We would rather spend the $$ to do this right the first time. We are looking for long stove life,liability,ease of operation,good access for maintance, dealer and company support with any issues. etc. And with that in mind we are narrowing our search down and looking at harman, particularly the P68. So with that in mind here are some more questions.
1 Is a brand name ( like harman) that much better than say Summers heat from lowes?

2 What kind of stove life would a harman give me ( with good maintance and up keep) 5,10,20 yrs?

3 Do I understand correctly the P68 will run as well on a low setting as a higher setting and is not as finicky as some with pellet brands?

4 I have been told maintance on the P68 is more like monthly rather than daily or weekly. true or not?

5 I have also been told that on a low setting I could to use 1 to 1/12 bags of pellets per 24 hrs. Sound about right?

6 Assuming I have some help and I'm not a complete doofus, any reason not to just pick up the stove at the dealer and install it my self? it would save some serious $$

There are two harman dealers in my area , Home and Hearth in Hampton falls N.H and D & J home and hearth in sanford M.E. right now we are leaning towards home and hearth in hampton N.H. but If anyone has feedback from your experience with either of these places I would appreciate hearing about it.
Again, thank you so much for your time and expertize in answering our questions.
JB

 

[Bigjim13]

My wife and I went through the same process last spring when Oil was up to $5/gal in our area. We use about 525 gallon a year and were looking at almost $3k to heat our house, not including propane which we use about 300 gallons/yr. We did alot of research and finally settled on a Harman P61A. We looked at Quadra fire, jotul (sp?) and several Lowes/Home Depot brands.

What it finally boiled down to is that everybody we talked to and every review we could find on Harman was positive. We could find very few reviews on the Models that HOme Depot and Lowes were offering with the exception of Englander (which seemed to be pretty decent as well). In the end we settled on the Harman because of value. We got qoutes on having as many different stoves installed as possible. In the end the Harman offered more value, meaning for what we would pay for the Harman it was not that much more expensive than a Quadra Fire (that was smaller and rated for fewer BTU's) and any of the other stoves we looked at. Their warranty is good too and everybody you talk to in the industry or that has looked/bought stoves knows the Harman name.

As far as cleaning, I clean mine about once a week. I let it shut down and give it a good cleaning from head to toe. I think this may be overkill but for what we spent I don't want to take a chance on having an issue because I didn't keep it clean.

The Harman P61A was rated at 61,000 BTU's and we heated our ranch style house this year (approx 1000 sq ft) on about 4 tons of pellets. It's very simple to run. Fill the hopper, set the temp and let it go. On the low setting it was not uncommon to only go through about 1 bag of pellets in 24hrs.

Installation, I have heard from several people that they are simple to install and after watching the crew install it-I would agree. We paid to have it installed though because, frankly, I am not very handy. The crew had it installed in just over an hr. I am very happy with the Harman we bought.

This is not to say there aren't many other great stoves out there though, my wife and I just felt the Harman offered the best Value.

 

[CanadaClinker]

Another couple of questions you may want to ask the dealer is 'which stove does he/she have in their own home?', 'what do they like and dislike about it?' and 'if they were to do it again, which stove would they put in and why?... the answers will hopefull tell you more about a stove and 'the dealer'...... those are straight up questions to the dealer but it might give you more first hand info on a particular stove.... ;-)

 

[jbmaine]

Hi thanks for the replies, I did ask the harman dealers what stove they had, One had a p45 he was trying, the other did not specify. I asked alot of questions in this post. I'm guessing I might get more replies if I split them up in different posts.
Thanks
JB

 

[Xena]

You might want to add Harman P68 to your thread title
to attract people who own that stove.

I don't own a P68 so can't answer most of those questions, but
#6. One good reason to have the dealer install it is to retain their
support. I'm not positive, but from what I've read it seems most
dealers won't provide service if you install yourself. Might be a
good question to ask them before you go purchase.

 

[weatherguy]

Harman's a good choice, it may be a good time of the year to get a good deal on the stove and install, it was worth it to me to have the dealer install as he ran into a couple snags that would have tripped me up but he had the tools and experience to get it done.

 

[jbmaine]

Thanks for the input, those are good points, the only reason I was thinking of installing myself was saving$$. If I buy it in N.H and install it myself I can save $450 install fee and $180 in sales tax, but I don't want to be stuck without service if needed. I'll look into that.
On a side note, one dealer I talked to said if I bought a stove from him, and had him install it, he would take care of any repairs if needed while under warrenty but charge me milage, 22 miles each way would cost me $50. that seems a bit much.
Thanks
JB

 

[CanadaClinker]

When we went to buy our pellet stove last December, a couple of things sold us on the model we finally decided on (Quadra-Fire Cassic Bay 1200). One was when I looked at the cleaning system for the heat exchanger with the harman P68. When I compared how it was cleaned (with the wedge shaped tool from the inside of the stove) and how the Quadra-fire Classic Bay 1200 had pull rods which do the entire job (without opening the door) with 2 pulls of the rods, seemed to me to be easy maintenance and less messy with the Quad over the long run. Another was the high visibility of the flame through the extensive 'Bay' window of the Quad 1200. Love to watch the fire from any angle of the livingroom. Our stove.... (broken link removed to http://www.quadrafire.com/Products/Pellet_Burning/Pellet_Model.asp?f=CB1200) I liked that the unit would take 2 - 40lb bags in the hopper and also that the unit was automatic lighting and ran off a thermostat on an interior wall of our home. Again, the dealer had this unit in his home was another reasurance that it wouldn't be giving a lot of trouble in the future and I was sure he knew how to fix it if it did need serious fix'n (there are a lot of units out there now and they are like the new cars loaded with extra electronics and even the dealers, I'm sure, are challanged by them). When I searched the net for troubles with this unit, there wern't a lot of 'repeated' problems with this particular Quad model. These were our personal preferences for choosing the unit we did and I respect that others would have their own preferences for sure.

Good Luck and have fun with the stove hunting.... :coolsmile:

 

[Dr_Drum]

I know this isn't a "Hey, my stoves better than yours" post, but I have had excellent performance from my Lopi Leyden. It's worth a look at if you can find a dealer. Very high quality.
Mike -

 

[Wet1]

"1 Is a brand name ( like harman) that much better than say Summers heat from lowes? "
Yes and no. You do get a more refined product when you spend the extra money of the Harman, but the Englander is a proven performer. All around I'd say the Harman is a significantly nicer stove. It's up to you to decide if their products are worth that much more of a price premium.

"2 What kind of stove life would a harman give me ( with good maintance and up keep) 5,10,20 yrs?"
There's no reason a Harman shouldn't last at least 10 years with regular cleaning and maintenance. 15 or 20 is certainly a possibility.

"3 Do I understand correctly the P68 will run as well on a low setting as a higher setting and is not as finicky as some with pellet brands?"
The Harmans run excellent and burn nicely, regardless of settings. My Harman has yet to find a pellet it didn't like. My Englander does not run as clean at very low feed rates and it might be a little more finicky about pellets.

"4 I have been told maintance on the P68 is more like monthly rather than daily or weekly. true or not?"
I have to clean my P38 after each ton of pellets. It's fast and easy. I do brush/wipe down the interior and HX once or twice between major cleanings to keep the stove running efficiently, but this only takes about 10 seconds. Overall the Harman is a lot less upkeep than the Englander, mostly due to the large ash pan in the Harman.

"5 I have also been told that on a low setting I could to use 1 to 1/12 bags of pellets per 24 hrs. Sound about right?
No. it should eat less pellets than that on the lowest setting. I have a P38 (same basic stove w/o much of the fluff) and I can get about 48 to 52 hours out of a single bag of hardwood pellets on the lowest setting. Keep in mind very little heat is produced, but it's nice for this time of the year. If you're installing this in a basement (as I recall), you'll probably always need to use a higher setting to get any noticeable heat upstairs.

"6 Assuming I have some help and I’m not a complete doofus, any reason not to just pick up the stove at the dealer and install it my self? it would save some serious $$"
They are really easy to install (IMO), I'd suggest downloading the manual and seeing if this is something you think you can tackle... I suspect so.

"There are two harman dealers in my area , Home and Hearth in Hampton falls N.H..."
There was a family posting here not to long ago that had significant problems with their stove. They bought from a relatively new dealer in NH and were VERY upset about the lack of help they received from them. I don't know if this is the same dealer you've mentioned (the name rang a bell with me), but if so, I would think twice about giving them your business I'd suggest doing a search...

 

[Souzafone]

My stove is a bit smaller, but I've looked at the manuals and they are similarly designed. If you've looked at the interior of a Harman and compared it to a stove in a box store the differences should be obvious, cast vs stamped steel, etc. A dealer should be willing to show you how to take apart a stove for cleaning, examine the pieces and see how they are made, do they have wearable components or are they more solidly made? The cleaning tool that comes with a Harman is for scraping the burnpot, which you should do every day, but the heavier cleaning is done much less often. In mid season I spend a couple of hours cleaning thoroughly, including some items the manual doesn't discuss. After all, a dealer sells service too. I didn't do my own install, but could have, if I had known of this site first. I would verify that a delaer would cover warranty parts if I did my own repairs based on their diagnosis, if you are adept enough to handle repairs, and adept enough to convince the dealer of this. You do need to check the draft setting when installing, so either they would have to visit your house anyway, or let you borrow their meter. This might be a good way to build up some trust with the dealer from both sides. FWIW, in 5 years of ownership we have had zero warrantable repairs needed. Good luck.

 

[Stevekng]

I have a Quadrafire Castille, an Enviro Meridian, and a St. Croix Afton Bay. I like them all but my favorite is the Enviro Meridian. It has the best overall performance and ease of cleaning combinations. The others have their own strong points and I would not hesitate to buy any of them. NEWP pellets burn the best in all of them, followed by Energex in the green bag(softwood), then Corinth,in that order of burn quality.

 

[jbmaine]

Thanks for all the info everyone.This is making it much easier for us to narrow down our choises, and gave us some new ones to look at as well
Thanks again
JB