New P68 owner here

[timbo]

Greetings,

New guy here. I just installed a P68 this past week after having used a coal stove for the past 26 years to heat with (the past three winters the coal stove was the primary heat as I couldn’t bring myself to pay oil prices). The coal stove was a bit too small for the house (a drafty 100 year old 1700 square foot New Englander) but it kept the house tolerably warm except during the bitterest cold. When it got that cold, we just wore more clothing. I’m working slowly on sealing up and better insulating the house bit by bit.

I installed the pellet stove on the hearth where the coal stove used to be and ran a 4” stainless steel flex pipe up the fieldstone fireplace and chimney. I hooked it to a 3” to 4” adaptor/clean out Tee and from there over to the stove.

The stove is great…my wife won’t let me turn it off since I put it into operation last Sunday. It’s not really cold enough to run it yet.

I have 5 tons ready to go…hopefully will be enough for the winter. We used to burn about 3-4 tons of coal per season so I bought an extra 1 ton buffer just in case. Plus, we could get it for $210 a ton plus $50 for delivery from Home Depot if we bought 5 tons so we sealed the deal. Best prices I could find around the central NH area. Hopefully the pellets will burn OK…so far, so good with just under 3 bags burned…there are so many variables in pellets and seemingly not much consistency in ratings…

I hooked up a thermostat to be used more as a timer like I’ve read about here and it seems to work OK. I’m sure it will save on pellets.

Anyway, all this to ask a question…I was a bit underwhelmed when I went to attach the flue to the stove and all that was on the stove was a bare flange, no way to make sure the pipe connected to it didn’t pop off. I put a thick layer of hi heat RTV on the flange and pushed the flue pipe on it, hoping for the best…It seems to be OK, no smoke on startup and the CO alarm stays quiet (even with new batteries in it) so I guess it’s OK…I was just a little concerned that there wasn’t much to attach to. Did I attach it correctly or there a better and more secure way to bring the flue pipe to the stove?

Great forum here….just found it the other day. I hope to learn more about heating with pellets as I read stuff here.

Tim

 

[pelletdude]

Welcome. Sounds like you installed your venting properly. We add one screw in that flange.

You bought pellets from a big box - good thing you have a multi fuel stove.

Let see what others have to say.

 

[timbo]

Pelletdude,

yeah, I did some research before I took the plunge on the pellets and the reviews on that brand of pellets (I can't remember the name now but they were from Quebec, I think) and they had very good reviews.

You said you put one screw in the flange... how did you do that? There were no holes in the flange as I was expecting to see that a sheetmetal screw could go into. I thought of drilling a hole into the flange and could still do that if that would work. I'm going to shut the stove down tomorrow and clean it and I could do it then.

Thoughts?

 

[jtakeman]

Welcome timbo,

Nice stove you picked out. Pictures of the stove???

What pellets did you get from HD???

jay

 

[pelletdude]

We use a self tapping screw - you can drill a small pilot and put in the sheet metal screw. Some installers might just use the heat silicone.

 

[timbo]

I'll drop some pic's in here tomorrow. Also, I'll have to look at a bag of pellets and see what brand they are...I just can't remember right now and I'm at work, soon to leave for the day...

 

[timbo]

the HD pellet brand I received was "Fireside Ultra Premium Pellets"

 

[imacman]

the HD pellet brand I received was "Fireside Ultra Premium Pellets"

We're hearing better reviews on these pellets this year than last, so hopefully you'll be all set.

And don't forget the pics, or (as we say on the forum), no pics= it really didn't happen! ;-P

 

[capecod]

I have a P68. My stove likes Barefoot Pellet. Lots of heat, low ash.
You will LOVE this stove.

 

[jbmaine]

Congratulation's on the new stove. We're on our first year with a P68 ourselves. I'd be curious to see how you like it compared to a coal stove. We replaced an old wood stove with a P68 and so far for us it's a " should have done this years ago" kind of thing. It's that good.
I agree with you on the stove to T connection, It's kinda loose. I installed mine the same way you did and also put a screw in for added peace of mind. I double checked with the dealer when I put it together and was told that's the way they do it. However since joining this forum ( and asking tons of questions) It looks like if you use pellet stove pipe instead of regular stove pipe you can use an appliance adaptor for the stove to pipe connection and get a much tighter mechanical fit. I'm sure other people with more experience will jump in with more exact info on the different ways to hook up your stove, but it sounds like the way you put it together will work.
If you haven't really cranked your stove up yet for any length of time, when you do you may find you get some stove and stove pipe " baking in " smell. I tried mine out on high for a while the other morning and got a lot of smell, it was so bad it set off the carbon monoxide alarm. I thought I might have had a leak but several people told me the "baking in " fumes will set the alarm off and since it hasn't happened again I believe thats what it was.
JB

 

[timbo]

Thanks all on the info on this stove/pellets. I am shutting the stove down today to do it's first weekly cleaning and try and attach the flue pipe a bit more firmly to the stove. We'll see how that goes...in the meantime, I have a roof over part of my house to repair today (right down to replacing rafters...Yikes!)...oh what fun.

jbmaine, I can already see that this is going to be better than coal....WAY better. Just in convenience alone it will be totally worth it. Coal is about $100 more a ton where I live. It's said that coal has more BTU's /ton then pellets, but with a coalstove you have to constantly babysit it...shake the grate 2-3 times a day, keep loading in fresh coal every few hours or it will go out and restarting a coal stove is a pain in the backend. Also the coal dust and ash dust from shaking the grate just gets everywhere....it can't be good breathing that stuff.

With this pellet stove, it's basically load in a bag or two when it needs it, do a 5 minute daily clean and then every week do a weekly clean (15 minutes)...the only thing that would be simpler would be to run oil heat but I totally removed my oil fed boiler / forced hotwater system three years ago (I am thinking about installing a smallish oil hot air furnace just as a back up but haven't convinced myself to do that yet). I am trying to wean myself off the oil nipple as much as I can.

I'll try and get some pics up today...it's going to be a really busy day so it might not happen until tomorrow or early next week.