New Hudson River Saranac pellet stove

[GeriatricGinger]

Morning..
I recently (last friday) replaced my 1987 Treemont stick burner insert with a 2013 New Hudson River Saranac insert. The Treemont was rated at 40k BTU, and the Saranac (per manual) rated at 50k. I assume these figures are a WOT..

What we've learned thusfar is that we struggle to get the same heat from pellets as we did with wood, on roughly same settings. The stove is clean, but it just doesn't seem to produce much heat unless we crank it up. Then, it mows through pellets like rabbits in a lettuce farm.

Flame looks good, and both fans seem to be blowing fine. I realize I've lost the 'radiant heat' I got from the stick-burner, but it's a struggle to get this pellet stove to heat the room it's in to 70*F on setting '3' (1-5 available). Since Friday, we've went through 4 bags of pellets; 2 bags of Turman Premiums, and 2 bags of Trae Heat (these came with the stove.) I do have ceiling fans throughout the house to aid in circulation, but it seems futile. Daytime temps have been in the 30-40s, and nights 25-30F.

As I am completely new to the pellet-world, do you have some suggestions as to what I can do to improve the efficiency of this? My house is 2-story non-open floorplan. The stick burner did a much better job of heating the house, but I wanted to get away from cutting/splitting/storing/hauling cord after cord of firewood.

I'm not really feeling that I've stepped in the right direction, so I'm looking for some guidance.

Thank you much, in advance, for your assistance.

Rick

 

[pageyjim]

To me it doesn't sound like it's doing that bad using 4 bags in 3+ days. It is always worthwhile to share more info on the home like size, insulation etc. It is possible that you are losing efficiency with to lean of a burn. That can be a fine line getting that right. I like to err on the leaner side personally. You can try to lower the air making sure you still have a good burn. That may in turn send less heat up the flue and more into your home. Lots of good info here on getting proper burns that is universal for all stoves.

 

[pageyjim]

Here is another way to look at it. If you heated your house for 3 days using 4 bags. That means you heated your house using app 18,000 btu/hr.
Using 8250 btu/lb for pellets
330000 btu/40lb bag etc.
These are input numbers also. The default efficiency used for pellet stoves is 78%. Of course we don't know the size and insulation level of your house. Again you may be able to squeeze a little more efficiency possibly as stated before.

 

[Watcher1]

3 bags in 4 days? I burn 4, 5 gallon pails of corn everyday, plus some LP in the mornings running on 3 or med heat.
If you were at 2 bags a day at 6 bucks each you would only be at $360 a month. I remember heating with wood. warm then cold in the mornings for a bit till the fire got going again. But hey it was free except the work!

 

[GeriatricGinger]

Correction.. as of right now, since Friday at 9pm to now, I've put 6 bags through it (Turman premium x4, Trae Heat x2). Saturday, it was about 30ish and a little breezy. Pellet stove on 4, we never crested 67 in the room where it resides. House is 2000sf non open floor plan Cape Cod. Stove is on main floor in living room. The rest of the house was 5-8F colder than the living room. As a result the heat pump kept kicking on with it's tstat at 64F.
House built in '87, uses Anderson windows, but prolly lacks good insulation (judging by the build quality of other things in the house.

The stick burner would about run you out of the living room with damper set on about 20-25%.

The other thing we've noticed with the pellet stove is that like right now, it's on 1. The fire will flare up to about 8-10" high for around 30 sec, then all but die down to coals for a minute or two, then flare back up, continuing this cycle. This is also the case when it's on any other setting (3 is common setting). The fire rise is a bit higher on 3 than it is on 1, for obvious reasons, I'd assume.\

I do appreciate your input and suggestions. I'll try to find something on setting the lean-burn stuff you mentioned..


The stove has two fans; one exhaust and one convection fan. With the stick burner, it would only pull air for the firebox AND convection from within the house. This pellet stove uses an OAK, which is in place.

 

[gfreek]

Sorry I cant comment on running your stove but I can tell you that your pellet stove will not heat like your wood burner did..Yes some are used as main heat source, but a pellet stove is more supplemental heating. Like you said you are going to have to crank up that pellet burner to maintain temp..

 

[UpStateNY]

I suspect all your hot air is going to upstairs bedrooms in your cape cod house. Probably not a lot of insulation upstairs dormer window walls. Cold air rushing down stairs to your pellet stove. I bet the upstairs is nice and warm. You were expecting a 50K BTU pellet stove to heat 2000 sq feet. Yup that might take 1.5 to 2 bags per day. Below zero F will require 3 bags per day if your stove can burn that many pellets.

I burn about 1 bag a day for 20 to 30 degrees outside.

My 40K + BTU pellet stove does a good job heating the upstairs floor of raised ranch 1243 sq feet upstairs even when its 20 below zero outside. The living room will be a nice 72 or 74 degrees and the back bedrooms will be 5 to 7 degrees colder. On cold nights we run a fan in the hallway pushing cold air from back bedrooms on the floor toward the pellet stove. Those cold days will required 2 bags. The downstairs is heated by fuel oil hot water baseboard heating. Been doing this since 2008 with no worries.

 

[GeriatricGinger]

new issue... Switched to Ozark pellets last night.. Left today for a few hours, had stove on 2. Came home, the burn pot was almost overflowing, fire was weakly burning, and blowers were running.. shut it down, cleaned the burn pot out, refired.. Seemed to be ok, but just looked at it again, and the burn pot is (again) filling up. Ran 8 bags of Turmans through it with no issues.. These Ozarks have (coincidentally or not) shows signs of issues now.
The flame is not black-tipped, but doesn't have the force or speed it had before, with the Turman pellets.
With the Turmans, the burn pot never got more than 1/2" deep.. These Ozarks are about 1.5" deep in the pot.. Thoughts?


EDIT: Found the problem LOL Wife cleaned out the ash drawer, but didn't get both sides latched. There was about a 1/2" gap on the right side of the drawer, causing the air to be drawn through there, rather than the actual burn pot area.

Whew..

 

[GeriatricGinger]

So I've ran Turmans, Ozark, Trae Heat, and Stove Chow pellets through it.. Trae Heat seem to be least dirty/ashy of the bunch. None really seem any 'hotter' than the others. On setting 3, I seem to be hovering around 1.5-2 bags/day, and struggle to get the room it's in above 69*F in 30*F outside weather.

 

[tbear853]

On setting 3, I seem to be hovering around 1.5-2 bags/day, and struggle to get the room it's in above 69*F in 30*F outside weather.

Dang ..... I'm not so far from you so I have a vague idea of your weather recently. Since last Friday 9 days ago, I've actually had my stove shut down completely twice during the heat wave mid week and then yesterday I shut it off early AM .... and I typically run it on low settings. Not sure what your count is but in those 9 days I've used maybe 5-6 bags. It's been a mild week.

I once lived in a 1947 Cape Cod with "rooms" with a papa bear wood stove with blower to distribute in the LR and you either was cold in the bedrooms or sweating in the living room, burning up at the head of the stairs, cold in the upstairs BRs, but generally felt pretty good in the kitchen or bathroom which were both not far off LR. Hard house to heat evenly from a single source.

Now I live in a two story log home with loft above LR, a single upstairs BR/bath, and 2 BRs / bath down hall from kit/din/LR on ground floor ..... over basement. 4 Ceiling fans, we keep one on low hanging over LR area which is open from loft. I use the PStove as a supplement heat, keeps the part we live in very comfortable. T-stat for house heat is set 62-63, rarely comes on.
I also use a couple small infared heaters as spot heat as needed .... like this morning to kill chill since PStove was off.

 

[GeriatricGinger]

My 'primary' heat source is the PStove.. well, really, it's a heat pump, but when I have to run that, my electric bill jumps 2-3x. I think that the reason my PStove heats less than the stick burner I replaced (with abt same BTU rating) is that the PStove pulls convection air from within the chimney area of the fireplace (it's an insert), where the stick-burner pulled room air to feed convection fans.. house heat pump tstat is set on 65.

 

[tbear853]

My 'primary' heat source is the PStove.. well, really, it's a heat pump, but when I have to run that, my electric bill jumps 2-3x.

I understand .... BTDT ... been using a PStove since 1992 now. Some winters I have used 4 ton or more, but unless something drastic happens, I'll have a bunch left over this year.

What is different about a pellet stove is it heats mostly by heating air that get's distributed. A insert or free standing wood stove heats by radiant heat. Some wood burner have jackets around the fire box and use a blower to move air across the surface to heat, so some radiant heat is lost close up, but you have air moving. BTUs come in different faces.

You may try using some smaller "fans" on low speeds to move heated air to where you need it. I know some here sit a fan on top of the hopper lid to help move the heat a certain way beside what the stove's fans can do .... and in some cases this maybe draws heated air up from behind the stove to move out across the room as well.

Just "thinking it out" ..... and don't sell those quartz infared heaters short .... they will take the chill off and are easy on the electric bill. (Do check the plugs for overheating though, I found one that apparantly had a "not so good" connection molded plug to cord, replaced plug, cool now).

 

[GeriatricGinger]

thanks, tbear.. helluva learning curve for this old fart, i tell ya.